“The strongest guard is placed at the gateway to nothing. Maybe because the condition of emptiness is too shameful to be divulged.”

“The strongest should come first in comedy because once a character is really established as funny everything he does is funny.”

“Scratch a Yale man with both hands and you'll be lucky to find a coast-guard. Usually you find nothing at all.”

“Oh, such a shame, such a shame. Oh, such a shame. What’s it all about anyhow?”“I’ve wondered for a long time.”“But why bring it to me?”“I guess I’m the Black Death,” he said slowly. “I don’t seem to bring people happiness any more.”

“As an indifference cherished, or left to atrophy, becomes an emptiness, to this extent he had learned to become empty of Nicole, serving her against his will with negations and emotional neglect. One writes of scars healed, a loose parallel to the pathology of the skin, but there is no such thing in the life of an individual. There are open wounds, shrunk sometimes to the size of a pin-prick, but wounds still. The marks of suffering are more comparable to the loss of a finger, or of the sight of an eye. We may not miss them, either, for one minute in a year, but if we should there is nothing to be done about it.”

“He had angered Providence by resisting too many temptations. There was nothing left but heaven, where he would meet only those who, like him, had wasted earth.”

“I want to just be lazy and I want some of the people around me to be doing things, because that makes me feel comfortable and safe - and I want some of them to be doing nothing at all, because they can be graceful and companionable for me.”