“Rabo Karabekian: I'm in the middle of a sentence.Circe Berman: Who isn't?.”

“Oh happy Meat. Oh happy Soul. Oh happy Rabo Karabekian.”

“I had made her so unhappy that she had developed a sense of humor. [-Rabo Karabekian]”

“kar.a.bek.i.an (n.); (from Rabo Karabekian, U.S. 20th Cent. painter). Fiasco in which a person causes total destruction of own work and reputation through stupidity, carelessness or both.”

“And what is literature, Rabo," he said, "but an insider's newsletter about affairs relating to molecules, of no importance to anything in the universe but a few molecules who have the disease called 'thought'.”

“I had no respect whatsoever for the creative works of either the painter or the novelist. I thought Karabekian with his meaningless pictures had entered into a conspiracy with millionaires to make poor people feel stupid. I thought Beatrice Keedsler had joined hands with other old-fashioned storytellers to make people believe that life had leading characters, minor characters, significant details, insignificant details, that it had lessons to be learned, tests to be passed, and a beginning, a middle, and an end.”

“I'm not a drug salesman. I'm a writer.""What makes you think a writer isn't a drug salesman?”