“I'm a licensed private investigator and have been for quite a while. I'm a lone wolf, unmarried, getting middle-aged, and not rich. I've been in jail more than once and I don't do divorce business. I like liquor and women and chess and a few other things. The cops don't like me too well, but I know a couple I get along with. I'm a native son, born in Santa Rosa, both parents dead, no brothers or sisters, and when I get knocked off in a dark alley sometime, if it happens, as it could to anyone in my business, nobody will feel that the bottom has dropped out of his or her life.”

“A successful college president once complained to me, I'm so busy that I'm going to have to get a helicopter! Well, I answered, you'll be ahead so long as you're the only president who has one. But don't get it. Everyone will expect more out of you.”

“You know, Leo's brother's hooking me up with a car when I get my license. I'm making you get in while it's moving.”

“I'm going to cure RM." Marcus laughed. "I wondered when someone would finally get around to that. It's been on my to-do list for ages, but you know how things are: Life gets so busy, and saving the human race is such an inconvenience.”

“If I'm reading something I happen to know and gets it wrong, I just don't trust the book any more. What I ask of a novel I'm reading is that it should know a fraction more about the things I know than I do. When I'm writing...I ask myself: would I be convinced by this if I read it? If I knocked against this bit of scenery, would it feel solid?”

“Oh, good lord, Jeff. Don't go getting all emotional on me. I've been getting it from my mom, my dad, my sister, the freaking MAILMAN--I don't need it from you, too. All I ask is that you promise me one thing.''What?''Just water the plants while I'm gone, all right?''You don't have plants, Tad.''I know. I just always wanted to say that.”