“You are all a lost generation.[with credit to Gertrude Stein]”

“I thought that all generations were lost by something and always had been and always would be”

“She's vicious,' Miss Stein said. 'She's truly vicious, so she can never be happy except with new people. She corrupts people.”

“All our words from loose using have lost their edge.”

“Then as I was getting up to the Closerie des Lilas with the light on my old friend, the statue of Marshal Ney with his sword out and the shadows of the trees on the bronze, and he alone there and nobody behind him and what a fiasco he'd made of Waterloo, I thought that all generations were lost by something and always had been and always would be and I stopped at the Lilas to keep the statue company and drank a cold beer before going home to the flat over the sawmill.”

“No one you love is ever truly lost.”

“You're an expatriate. You've lost touch with the soil. You get precious. Fake European standards have ruined you. You drink yourself to death. You become obsessed with sex. You spend all your time talking, not working. You are an expatriate, see? You hang around cafes.”