“I only like two other things; one is bad for my work and the other is over in half an hour or fifteen minutes. Sometimes less. Sometimes a good deal less.”

“Sometimes there is no happy choice, Sam, only one less grievous than the others.”

“We've only been sitting here forty minutes. I'm never at the morning table less than an hour and a half. I do some of my finest plotting over breakfast coffee and raisin brioche.”

“If I am to speak ten minutes, I need a week for preparation; if fifteen minutes, three days; if half an hour, two days; if an hour, I am ready now.”

“Sex without love is like a goddamn business transaction. And sometimes both parties feel as if they got a good deal, but that doesn't make it any less so.”

“Where people work longest and with least leisure, they buy the fewest goods. No towns were so poor as those of England where the people, from children up, worked fifteen and sixteen hours a day. They were poor because these overworked people soon wore out -- they became less and less valuable as workers. Therefore, they earned less and less and could buy less and less.”