“Who is Hunter Becker?""Becker the Gory? Lighthouse Keepers? Boston?""I would've preferred Becker the Easiley Surrendering or Becker the Quite Reasonable, but beyond that his name tells me nothing.”

“when you remove time," de becker says, "you are subject to the lowest-quality intuitive reaction”

“understand what Ernest Becker meant when he said something like ‘To live fully is to live with an awareness of the rumble of terror that underlies everything,”

“Telkens als hij de nieuwe, slotloze deur van De Becker passeerde, stak hij haar zonder te kloppen open, brulde keihard 'Onnozelaar!' en smakte haar even keihard weer dicht”

“Eddie's ma, that would be Mrs. Callahan, her husband got killed last winter over at the Feelin' Good Cookie Factory. They had an open casket at the funeral so you could see dead Mr. Callahan, who hadn't looked that great in life and looked even worse in death. Especially after that cookie press got to him. But Mr. Becker from Becker Funeral Homes had done a nice job fluffing Mr. Callahan's face back out again so he ended up looking like one of those waxy mannequins that you pay a dime to see up at the Wisconsin state Fair.”

“[Julie] had lived a great deal among lies, before plumping for a small life of her own, a sincere and restricted life from which all pretense, even in matters sensual, was banished. How many crazy decisions and allegiances to successive aspects fo the truth! Had she not, one day when her costume for a fancy dress had demanded short hair, cut off the great chestnut mane that fell below her waist when she let it down? 'I could have hired a wig,' she thought. 'I might also, at a pinch, have passed the rest of my life with Becker or Espivant. If it comes to that, I could also have gone on stirring puddings in a saucepan at Carneilhan. The things "one might have done" are, in fact, the things one could not do...”