“( a court officer's assessment of a particularly obnoxious young defendant...)"His mother shoulda ate him while his head was still soft."This kills me every time...”

“Amory Blaine inherited from his mother every trait, except the stray inexpressible few, that made him worth while.”

“He remembered his mother's love for him, and his family's, and his friends', and the enemy's intention to kill him seemed impossible.”

“A pink puff danced off his head. And he was dead. His eyes would haunt me later. But not then. Then, it was killing time.”

“In his particular line of business, peace had reigned for nearly a year. And peace was killing him.”

“IT was a sad if not an altogether broken young man who came to live in London after Wilde’s death. He could not yet realize that people, and particularly people in what was still called Society, had an uneasy conscience about their treatment of his friend and would fasten on him as a convenient scapegoat. We did not kill the man’s genius, they said in effect, we did not encourage a conspiracy to imprison him by means of a preposterous law, we are not to blame for his barren last years and early death; it was all the fault of this young man who bewitched him into a disastrous attack on his father, who is still free, rich, handsome, as we are not.”