“What time is it?""Time?""Time.""Oh," She said. "A quarter to four. Mr. Markham, something terrible has happened."She didn't have to tell me that. Something perfectly dreadful had happened, by God. Someone had called me in the middle of the bloody night.”

“Everybody tells me what a timesaver the Internet is, and how they can't believe they ever got along without it. And I know what they mean, but every time I use it I wind up wondering what people did with their spare time before computers came along to suck it all up.”

“Serendipity. Look for something, find something else, and realize that what you've found is more suited to your needs than what you thought you were looking for. ”

“It's enough of a strain killing people. I've no time for deer.--Mick Ballou”

“I dialed it now, and the machine picked up. I listened to a dead man's voice. I hung up, wondering how long it would be before someone unplugged the machine, how long before the telephone company cut off the phone service.You don't die all at once. Not anymore. These days you die a little at a time.”

“One thing that helps is to give myself permission to write badly. I tell myself that I’m going to do my five or 10 pages no matter what, and that I can always tear them up the following morning if I want. I’ll have lost nothing—writing and tearing up five pages would leave me no further behind than if I took the day off.”

“My glass was empty. I poured more scotch into it, took a small sip, and all at once the silly thing was empty again. Strange. Then it was full again. And then it was empty again. Strange, I thought. Fool glass must have a hole in it. Scotch disappears the instant it's poured. Strange. Then I was stretched out on the bed, too tired and too drunk to bother removing my shoes. My eyes closed themselves and the world crept away on little cat feet, leaving me floating in the middle of the air.”