“I told her the world was full of nice people. I'd have hated to try to prove it to her, but I said it, anyway.”

“I looked at her, with her hair spilled out on the pillows and the warmth of her body warming mine. And I thought, god-dang, if this ain't a heck of a way to be in bed with a pretty woman. The two of you arguing about murder, and threatening each other, when you're supposed to be in love and you could be doing something pretty nice. And then I thought, well, maybe it ain't so strange after all. Maybe it's like this with most people, everyone doing pretty much the same thing except in a different way. And all the time they're holding heaven in their hands.”

“I kissed her, a long hard kiss. Because baby didn't know it, but baby was dead, and in a way I couldn't have loved her more.”

“you might think it wasn't real nice to kick a dying man, and maybe it wasn't, but I'd been wanting to kick him for a long time, and it just never had seemed safe till now”

“It was like being asleep when you were awake and awake when you were asleep. I'd pinch myself, figuratively speaking - I had to keep pinching myself. Then I'd wake up kind of in reverse; I'd go back to the nightmare I had to live in. And everything would be clear and reasonable.”

“I finished the ale, started to order a third one, and decided against it. I'd had enough. More than enough. Or I never would have. You take just so much from a bottle, and then you stop taking. From then on you're putting.”

“I ain't saying you're a liar, because that wouldn't be polite. But I'll tell you this, ma'am. If I loved liars, I'd hug you to death.”