“...things I had come to find humor in would make your honest man swoon.”

“Nor would anybody suspect. If was one thing all people took for granted, was conviction that if you feed honest figures into a computer, honest figures come out. Never doubted it myself till I met a computer with a sense of humor.”

“He had not the makings of that honest man to whom success comes naturally.”

“Maybe if everything was beautiful, nothing would be.People saw one thing, they swooned over it. They saw this other thing, they pounded it with sticks.Maybe there had to be variety for life to work. Swoon over everything, you get bored. Beat everything with a stick-boring.”

“You can't make a person, a human being with a first kiss and a sense of humor and a favorite sandwich, and then expect her to dissolve back into scribbled notes and whiskeyed coffee when she no longer suits your purposes. I think I always knew she would come back to find me, someday.”

“I know why you want to wear the plum,” Marcelline said. “It’s ravishing. It’ll make Longmore swoon.”“It might make him do some things,” Sophy said. “But swooning isn’t one of them. He’s the sort of man who tells a girl he l-loves her—and then l-laughs. As thoughit’s a j-joke.”