“There is something about a Martini,Ere the dining and dancing begin,And to tell you the truth,It is not the vermouth--I think that perhaps it's the gin." --Ogden Nash”

“Carol would not be a bad one to [settle down] with. She's pretty and bright, and maybe this is what love is. She's good company: her interests broaden almost every day. She reads three books to my one, and I read a lot. We talk far into the night. She still doesn't understand the first edition game: Hemingway, she says, reads just as well in a two-bit paperback as he does in a $500 first printing. I can still hear myself lecturing her the first time she said that. Only a fool would read a first edition. Simply having such a book makes life in general and Hemingway in particular go better when you do break out the reading copies. I listened to myself and thought, This woman must think I'm a government-inspected horse's ass. Then I showed her my Faulkners, one with a signature, and I saw her shiver with an almost sexual pleasure as she touched the paper where he signed. Faulkner was her most recent god[.]”

“The camera would miss it all. A magnificent picture is never worth a thousand perfect words. Ansel Adams can be a great artist, but he can never be Shakespeare. His tools are too literal.”

“What's that old cowboy saying? Never was a horse that couldn't be rode, never was a man who couldn't be throwed.”

“The world was getting dangerously crowded with crazy people.”

“We're all running away. Some of us just don't get very far.”

“You are really nuts, you know it? One a these days they're gonna come over and just lock you up! You aren't playing with a full deck, Eunice. I think somebody blew your pilot light out. There's more. You know what? You got splinters in the windmill of your mind. You're playin hockey with a warped puck! I think you dine sprung a leak in your dingey....”