“The world was getting dangerously crowded with crazy people.”

“We're all running away. Some of us just don't get very far.”

“The camera would miss it all. A magnificent picture is never worth a thousand perfect words. Ansel Adams can be a great artist, but he can never be Shakespeare. His tools are too literal.”

“What's that old cowboy saying? Never was a horse that couldn't be rode, never was a man who couldn't be throwed.”

“Carol would not be a bad one to [settle down] with. She's pretty and bright, and maybe this is what love is. She's good company: her interests broaden almost every day. She reads three books to my one, and I read a lot. We talk far into the night. She still doesn't understand the first edition game: Hemingway, she says, reads just as well in a two-bit paperback as he does in a $500 first printing. I can still hear myself lecturing her the first time she said that. Only a fool would read a first edition. Simply having such a book makes life in general and Hemingway in particular go better when you do break out the reading copies. I listened to myself and thought, This woman must think I'm a government-inspected horse's ass. Then I showed her my Faulkners, one with a signature, and I saw her shiver with an almost sexual pleasure as she touched the paper where he signed. Faulkner was her most recent god[.]”

“There is something about a Martini,Ere the dining and dancing begin,And to tell you the truth,It is not the vermouth--I think that perhaps it's the gin." --Ogden Nash”

“COOL·NESS [KOOL-NIS] -nounCATCHING your mom gazing at the crazy crowd like she finally gets itWATCHING your dad head-banging like he’s Finn’s twin brotherLEARNING that your new friends Tash and Kallie are a thousand times more complicated than you realized, and loving them for itFEELING every one of your boyfriend’s pounding drumbeats, and thinking it’s the most romantic music ever writtenREALIZING you’re completely unique . . . even in a crowd”