“It was quality that killed Lilly; it was the end of The Great Gatsby, which was not her ending, which was not an ending within her grasp.”

“You only grow by coming to the end of something and by beginning something else.”

“And Father said, “There are no happy endings.” “Right!” cried Iowa Bob – an odd mixture of exuberance and stoicism in his cracked voice. “Death is horrible, final, and frequently premature,” Coach Bob declared. “So what?” my father said. “Right!” cried Iowa Bob. “That’s the point: So what?” Thus the family maxim was that an unhappy ending did not undermine a rich and energetic life. This was based on the belief that there were no happy endings.”

“This is what a self-centered religion does to us: it allows us to use it to further our own ends.”

“it's not god who's fucked up, it's the screamers who say they believe in him and who claim to pursue their ends in his holy name.”

“And when Dr. Daruwalla breathed in her dangerous aroma, he thought he'd at last identified the smell of sex, which struck him as an earthy commingling of death and flowers”

“Some producer actually told Franny that profanity revealed a poor vocabulary and a lack of imagination. And Frank and Lilly and Father and I all loved to shout at Franny, then, and ask her what she had said to that. 'What an anal crock of shit, you dumb asshole!' she'd told the producer. 'Up yours - and in your ear, too!”