“A book is the only real escape from this fallen world. Aside from death.”

“I hate when people ask what a book is about. People who read for plot, people who suck out the story like the cream filling in an Oreo, should stick to comic strips and soap operas. . . . Every book worth a damn is about emotions and love and death and pain. It's about words. It's about a man dealing with life. Okay?”

“Oh kid, it's all about confidence. That's the whole shebang right there. Whatever you do, do it with your nuts. That's how Ruth swung a bat-with his nuts. Court a girl, rob a bank, brush your teeth, do it with and from your God-given nuts or don't do it at all.”

“...Leaving his partners to die. Watching them run out of air...It was such a real possibility, Collins returning to earth by himself...now that's a stone-cold wheelman. That's the guy you want sitting at the wheel of a gassed-up Ford while you're inside a bank.”

“Of course many bars in Manhasset, like bars everywhere, were nasty places, full of pickled people marinating in regret.”

“I don't know. Sometimes I try to say what's on my mind and it comes out sounding like I ate a dictionary and I'm shitting pages. Sorry”

“It cost me everything, absolutely everything, but maybe it's not love if it doesn't cost us everything.”