“...doing the smoker's comedy act: he hunted automatically for an ashtray, didn't find one, tipped his ashes into the palm of his hand,...”

“How many more times would I have embraced him that night, how many more times would I have kissed him, if I had known the name of that stranger lover who was already in Montreal, who had already bought his stadium ticket from a scalper for the 5,000 tomorrow. That implacable lover who was going to turn Billy's eyes away from me forever.”

“Sooner or later you end up making deals with women. It's an injustice, really.”

“The angel of death had cruised him. Death, that hustler, that last lover.”

“In my old age, I was at last being permitted to make the discovery that lovemaking gets better and better with time, if it's with someone you care for.”

“He didn't understand how sadness came so easily to people. For him it was like a pile of rocks that had to be moved one at a time. Just thinking about it made him tired.”

“The most seductive sin, I suppose, is passing judgment on others, and the next must be acting out of one's anger when one has the power to hurt the ones who wound us.”