“By noon everyone had heard that I had spent the night with Marti in a hotel room and when the cops came by, with our mothers, I had asked for time to get dressed. It was also all over the school that I had deliberately provoked Gratz and lived to tell of it, and that Paul had knocked me flat. And on top of that, Spooky Darla had given me a thermonuclear kiss in public.No getting away from it: I was now Public Madman Number One.”

“I thought of the things that had happened to me over the years, and of how little I had made happen.”

“I gave up drinking, and the next time I saw Bonny at a party, she was mad at me about that too, and went off and made out all night with Chip Neminech, the tackle who demonstrated that not only is there no I in team, there’s no Q, either. I suppose, given that my mother was a girl, I shouldn’t have been surprised that some of them could get pretty weird.”

“In my terms, I settled for the realities of life, and submitted to its necessities: if this, then that, and so the years passed. In Adrian's terms, I gave up on life, gave up on examining it, took it as it came. And so, for the first time, I began to feel a more general remorse - a feeling somewhere between self-pity and self-hatred - about my whole life. All of it. I had lost the friends of my youth. I had lost the love of my wife. I had abandoned the ambitions I had entertained. I had wanted life not to bother me too much, and had succeeded - and how pitiful that was.”

“Of course you would, Mitt," Reagan said. "Well, I’m glad we understand each other, and I think your father would be proud of you being in his old spot, and I want you to know that when I’m choosing my Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, your resumé will be on the very top of the pile. It’s been great chatting with you but you know, I have to find a vice presidential candidate, and soon.”“Ha, ha, ha, ah it’s been great chatting with you, too, Mr. President, and—”Reagan cocked his head slightly, smiled, and caught the eye of a minion; a moment later Romney had been deposited outside the door like a discarded room service tray, having barely had time to shift from ha, ha, ha back to ah…ah…”

“A song is not a tool for changing a human heart in the way that a wrench is a tool for changing a bolt, but it was the tool I had, and I was the tool the OSP had. The cansos in "Songs from Underneath" were not really as subtle as a wrench. Their primary trope was the ancient trick of making the viewpoint character a victim of oppression, because people identify passionately with a strong viewpoint character, and there is intense pleasure in identifying with the narrator of a sad story or song. In "Black Beauty" that trick had made people begin to think that beating horses was bad; it was the trope that make privileged white children burn with outrage at "Native Son" and prudes weep over prostitutes in "Elle frequentait la rue Pigalle" and "My Name is Not Bitch." They also received, at no extra cost, the delicious smug superiority of sympathizing with an underdog, unlike their less-enlightened neighbors.Their primary”

“I had wanted life not to bother me too much, and had succeeded—and how pitiful that was.”