“I don't know where you'd find such a magazine." ~ on the stipulations set by a benefactor to the Harvard Advocate that the staff contain no Jews, homosexuals, or drunks”

“Why do they call it losing your virginity, anyway? It's Not Like I don't know where I left it." "You'd be surprised how many people don't.”

“Jacob," Rose persisted, "I still want to know what gave you the idea of singing like that. You weren't really drunk, were you?""Jews don't get drunk.""You don't know everybody I do.""Anyway, it was this." He laid a finger across the bridge of his nose and swept it down to the tip. "Put me in a lineup with a Chinaman, a Choctow, and a Hottentot, and ask anybody to pick out the Jew and they'll get it right on the first try.""But--""But nothing, Rose. It's the old Poe gimmick. Hide in plain sight. If a Jew tried to infiltrate that bunch of Nazis, what's the obvious thing to do? He'd head to the darkest corner he could find, he'd keep his head down and his trap shut and hope that nobody'd notice him. And do you think that would work? In a pig's ass - pardon my French, Rose - they'd catch him out in a minute. So I stood up and acted drunk and sang Nazi songs. No Jew would do that; so they just figured I was an unlucky Aryan who managed to pick up a bad gene from a wandering ancestor. So maybe this drunk wasn't quite one hundred percent pure Aryan, but he was obviously as good Nazi, so let him be. At least for now.”

“When I was an adolescent I wanted to be a Jew, a Bolshevik, black, homosexual, a junkie, half-crazy, and--the crowning touch-- a one-armed amputee, but all I became was a literature professor.”

“...Jake, a homosexual cop buried so deep in the closet he didn't know where to look for himself.”

“You know how it is with cats: They don't really have owners, they have staff.”