“His longterm aspirations were not a subject upon which he allowed himself to dwell. Not because they were in any way bad or bizarre, but because he had come to realize he didn't have any. Nothing specific anyway. He'd never pictured himself as anything in particular. Just a situation where he made enough money doing something... anything... enough to have whatever he wanted. A nice new Dodge pickup. A boat or maybe a little house someplace. The kind of things people wanted.”

“He was in a beastly hole. But decency demanded that he shouldn't act in panic. He had a mechanical, normal panic that made him divest himself of money. Gentlemen don't earn money. Gentlemen, as a matter of fact, don't do anything. They exist. Perfuming the air like Madonna lilies. Money comes into them as air through petals and foliage. Thus the world is made better and brighter. And, of course, thus political life can be kept clean!... So you can't make money.”

“But he'd never been in love. He knew that was what he was really asking himself. He'd never given himself to someone else completely. He'd always held something back, even if he hadn't known that he was doing it. He'd reserved the deepest part of him, the part that truly was him, because he'd feared that once he gave it away he would never get it back.”

“Like so many things Henry had wanted in life -- like his father, his marriage, his life -- it had arrived a little damaged. Imperfect. But he didn't care, this was all he'd wanted. Something to hope for, and he'd found it. It didn't matter what condition it was in.”

“And now, while he didn't particularly think any of these stories was a bit truer, he did realize that he didn't really know his wife at all; and that in fact the entire conception of knowing another person--of trust, of closeness, of marriage itself--while not exactly a lie since it existed someplace if only as an idea (in his parents' life, at least marginally) was still completely out-of-date, defunct, was something typifying another era, now unfortunately gone. Meeting a girl, falling in love, marrying her, moving to Connecticut, buying a fucking house, starting a life with her and thinking you really knew anything about her--the last part was a complete fiction, which made all the rest a joke.”

“There was no good or bad connected with anything any more.......He regretted nothing; wanted nothing. He was simply existing, and the way things were was the way they had always been and always would be. He didn't care any more. He did what had to be done, and endured in a timeless present, without past or future.”

“He was a successful general because he knew men. He knew that all men will go to hell over three things: alcohol, money . . . and sex. This fellow apparently hadn't. Better for him if he had!”