“Authors of light pieces have, nobody knows why, a genius for getting into minor difficulties: they walk into the wrong apartments, they drink furniture polish for stomach bitters, they drive their cars into the prize tulip beds of haughty neighbors, they playfully slap gangsters, mistaking them for old school friends.”

“Well, if I called the wrong number, why did you answer the phone?”

“Last night I dreamed of a small consolation enjoyed only by the blind: Nobody knows the trouble I’ve not seen.”

“Why do you have to be a nonconformist like everybody else?”

“Things have dropped from me. I have outlived certain desires; I have lost friends, some by death... others through sheer inability to cross the street.”

“My mother, for instance, thought-or rather, knew-that it was dangerous to drive an automobile without gasoline: it fried the valves, or something. 'Now don't you dare drive all over town without gasoline!' she would say to us when we started off" (31).”

“Early to rise and early to bed makes a male healthy, wealthy, and dead. ”