“...the new world, the communo-bourgeois, sermonizing, Tartuffian, automobilistic, alcoholic, gluttonous and cancerous world has only two anxieties: ass and bank account...”

“only a complete alcoholic can think life is funny ... any life! ...”

“The sadness of the world has different ways of getting to people, but it seems to succeed almost every time.”

“But maybe it's wrong of me to complain … I'm alive after all … and I lose an enemy or two every day … cancer, apoplexy, gluttony … it's a pleasure the number that pass on! … I'm not hard to please … a name! … another! … there are good things in life …”

“She was having an attack of knuckleheaded anxiety. Those attacks last a long time.”

“Hjalmar ... is holding him, he'd put the handcuff on him ... one, not two ... he only had one ...”

“My idealized account was so much to her liking that it brought us together. At that moment Lola seemed to discover that we had at least one taste in common, well concealed in my case, namely, a taste for social functions. She went so far as to kiss me in a burst of spontaneous emotion, something, I have to admit, that she seldom did. And then she was touched by the sadness of bygone fashions. Everyone has his own way of mourning the passage of time. It was through dead fashions that Lola perceived the flight of the years. "Ferdinand," she asked, "do you think there will be races here again?" "When the war is over, Lola, I should think..." "We can't be sure, can we?" "No, we can't be sure." The possibility that there would never again be races at Longchamp overwhelmed her. The sadness of the world has different ways of getting to people, but it seems to succeed almost every time.”