“You, still the squanderers of the empty hall —when the twilight comes, wide as woods…And the chandelier, like a sixteen-pointer, vaultswhere nothing can set foot.”

“As soon as she set foot outside, she could hear the empty conversation and laughter resume. Like sounding brass and tinkling cymbals.”

“There comes a moment, when you get lost in the woods, when the woods begin to feel like home.”

“But it was like wearing a size five sneakers when your foot is a seven- you can get by for a few steps, and then you set down and pull off the shoes because it just plain much”

“But here there was only hot swing music and liquor, dance halls, ban, and movies, and sex that hung in the gloom like a chandelier and flooded the world with brief, deceptive rainbows.”

“P. and J. did not like books set in large type with wide margins, such as pleased readers of more refined tastes, but rather pages set in small type stretching all the way across tightly justified lines, filled to the brim with words and sentences, like those enormous rustic dishes you can eat at long and heartily without every emptying them, and are all that can satisfy some gigantic appetites.”