“Cholesterol to go with alcohol; all the bad things in English-speaking life end in -ol.”

“Potato salad in the South is nothing less than the principal smuggler of cholesterol into the festive, careless heart. It is pure poison beneath the facade of bland puritan propriety. It is the food of choice at any food banquet of smiling relatives who celebrate tacitly among themselves the dark twining of two of their promising youth.”

“alternate the theories you entertain about all things.”

“The main thing is: Don't take any shit.That's the main thing.The unmain thing is: You are not going to figure anything out except how to get other people to take shit, so forget about everything except not taking any yourself.”

“A whole section of the family tree is pruned and primped and assessed as I politely sit there. Overall, I detect that the tree is fine: its leaves gently turning in the breeze of life. We have no scandal blight, no limb-wrenching storms of fate, no bad apples. I wonder what it is like when the Kennedys sit around for a disk check like this.”

“jejune longing is the chewing gum of life.”

“Life is a sandwich of activity between two periods of bed-wetting,”