“By the time Gilbert and I reached home we felt like two hydrants in unfortunate proximity to a kennel.”

“Sorry! Can't!' said Gilbert. 'Massage,' he explained, then exited the bar, apparently via catapult.'Philip?' Claire said.My first impulse was to follow Gilbert's lead by briskly dismounting the couch and diving through the Gilbert-shaped hole he'd left in the wall on departing.”

“Gilbert, as a rule, used money the way women use pepper spray; he liked having some handy but only produced it when physically threatened.”

“Gilbert... sat at the foot of the bed and wore the dazed, beleaguered look of a suspect hauled in for questioning on a day when the good cop has phoned in sick.”

“Though I could agree with him that Miss Gamache had a good heart, I couldn't read her book without wanting to plunge an ice pick into it while screaming, 'That's for chapter four!”

“Sorry I disagree,' she said while initialing some papers, having already acquired the mogul's knack of compounding an insult by multitasking while delivering it.”

“Get your feet off my desk, get out of here, you stink, and we're not going to buy your product." -- Atari President Joe Keenan, responding to Steve Jobs' offer to sell him rightsto the new personal computer he and Steve Wozniak developed (1976)”