“When F. W. Woolworth opened his first store, a merchant on thesame street tried to fight the new competition. He hung out a bigsign: "Doing business in this same spot for over fifty years." Thenext day Woolworth also put out a sign. It read: "Established aweek ago: no old stock.”

“But you’re out of another world old kid … You ought to live on top of the Woolworth Building in an apartment made of cutglass and cherry blossoms.”

“All the proper bands from then, when we were kids, yeah? The Rubettes and Mud and Chicory Tip. Yeah. Not like the bands they have now, stupid, modern bands all made out of wire and electricity.The proper old bands. You'd buy the singles, wouldn't you? The old singles they used to have in the old days. The proper ones. Very nostalgic feelings towards Woolworths. The pick 'n' mix. Remember the pick 'n' mix in Woolworths? All the sweets individually wrapped. Proper, old-fashioned sweets, yeah? Not like the sweets they have now, all with knives in them and AIDS.”

“The god of unreflecting drunkenness advised me to take no reading matter at all, or if I absolutely insisted on reading matter, then a little stack of Rasputin would do; Apollo, on the other hand, in his shrewd, sensible way, tried to talk me out of this trip to France altogether, but when he saw that Oskar's mind was made up, insisted on proper baggage; very well, I would have to take the highly respectable yawn that Goethe had yawned so long ago, but for spite, and also because I knew that The Elective Affinities would never solve all my sexual problems, I also took Rasputin and his naked women, naked but for their black stockings. If Apollo strove for harmony and Dionysus for drunkenness and chaos, Oskar was a little demigod whose business it was to harmonize chaos and intoxicate reason. In addition to his mortality, he had one advantage over all the full divinities whose characters and careers had been established in the remote past: Oskar could read what he pleased whereas the gods censored themselves.”

“She did not have time to wonder about his being late. He died bent over the sidewalk sign that stood out in front of the hardware store... He had not even had time to get into the store...”

“Every man is scared in his first battle. If he says he s not he s a liar. Some men are cowards but they fight the same as the brave men or they get the hell slammed out of them watching men fight who are just as scared as they are. The real hero is the man who fights even though he is scared.Some men get over their fright in a minute under fire. For some it takes an hour. For some it takes days. But a real man will never let his fear of death overpower his honor his sense of duty to his country and his innate manhood. Battle is the most magnificent competition in which a human being can indulge. It brings out all that is best and it removes all that is base.”