“Vanity in a newspaper man is like perfume on a whore: they use it to fend off a dark whiff of themselves.”

“It was almost enough to put a man off whoring.”

“Being a spy was something like standing on the south shore fending off a hurricane with a $2 poncho and an umbrella.”

“Beneath a toilet water of punctilio and restraint...a deep smell came off Kelly, a hint of a big foul cat, carnal as the meat on a butcher's block, and something else, some whiff of the icy rot and iodine in a piece of marine nerve left to bleach on the sand. With it all was that congregated odor of the wealthy, a mood within the nose of face powder, of perfumes which leave the turpentine of a witch's curse, the taste of pennies in the mouth, a whiff of the tomb. It was all of Deborah for me.”

“That's what we do: tell made-up stories to fend off the night, to put off telling the truth.”

“Keeping that man out of trouble was like trying to return a whore to chastity.”