“Wherever there's hope there's a trial.”

“There's that kind of money in the world. It aggravates you to have it, makes you miserable to spend it, and you hate yourself when it's gone. And when you hate yourself, you feel like spending money. Except there's no money left. And no hope.”

“Like it or not, it's the society we live in. Even the standard of right and wrong has been subdivided, made sophisticated. Within good, there's fashionable good and unfashionable good, and ditto for bad. Within fashionable good, there's formal and then there's casual; there's hip, there's cool, there's trendy, there's snobbish. Mix 'n' match.”

“There's no such thing as perfect writing, just like there's no such thing as perfect despair.”

“Where there's an entrance, there's got to be an exit. Most things work that way.”

“September 1973, that's where this novel begins. That's the entrance. We'll just hope there's an exit. If there isn't one, there wouldn't be any point in writing anything.”

“If a person would just make the effort, there's something to be learned from everything. From even the most ordinary, commonplace things, there's always something you can learn.”