“The yellow commuter train ran through canal-crossed fields as dull as graph paper. Always one saw evidence of the tiny brick houses that the incontinent municipalities, Voorschoten and Leidschendam and Rijswijk and Zoetermeer, pooped over the rural spaces surrounding The Hague.”

“An individualist town councillor will walk along the municipal pavement, lit by municipal gas and cleansed by municipal brooms with municipal water and - seeing by the municipal clock in the municipal market, that he is too early to meet his children coming from the municipal school, hard by the country lunatic asylum and the municipal hospital, will use the national telegraph system to tell them not to walk through the municipal park, but to come by the municipal tramway to meet him in the municipal reading-room, by the municipal museum, art-gallery, and library, where he intends ... to prepare his next speech in the municipal town hall in favor of the nationalization of canals and in increase of Government control of the railway system. "Socialism, Sir," he will say, "don't waste the time of a practical man by your fantastic absurdities. Self-help, Sir, individual self-help, that's what has made our city what it is.”

“Yellow light. Yellow light!" And she ran right through the red. "Jesus Christ, you can't drive.”

“I've seen it all through the yellow windows of the evening train... ”

“My father makes to-do lists, makes plans, makes business plans. This is how he starts, always with a blank sheet of graph paper.”

“No one saw firedrake as he made his escape along the canal.”