“There's all sorts of ways to live, Chip. Some of them you give a lot. Some of them you take a lot. Art, jazz, it was a kind of taking. You take from the audience, you take from yourself.”

“Do you still call it talent, if it blooms without any kind of nurturing? That's got to be something else.She made talent sound like a damned insult.”

“Chip said it was his piano hands - one ain't never doing the same thing as the other.”

“It ain't really Czechoslovakian,' I said, coughing. 'We used to call it the Cheque. Like, you drink it up now, you pay for it later.”

“Chip recons that he is charming as hell, and who am I to poke holes in his theory. That means that sometimes lies leave his mouth dressed like truth. He just can’t help it.”

“It's like that, I guess, when the past come to collect what you owe.”

“Ain't no glory made from being dependable.”