“Extenuating circumstance to be mentioned on Judgment Day: We never asked to be born in the first place.”

“I never asked to be born in the first place.”

“But he is tired. He puts the pistol to his head again. He says, “I never asked to be born in the first place.”

“Sometimes I wonder if he wasn't born dead. I never met a man who was less interested in the living. Sometimes I think that's the trouble with the world: too many people in high places who are stone-cold dead.”

“why did it have to happen?'It was one more hollow echo to the question humanity had been asking for millenniums, the question men were seemingly born to ask.”

“The public health authorities never mention the main reason many Americans have for smoking heavily, which is that smoking is a fairly sure, fairly honorable form of suicide.”

“Perhaps some people really are born unhappy. I surely hope not. Speaking for my sister and myself: We were born with the capacity and determination to be utterly happy all the time. Perhaps even in this we were freaks. Hi ho.”