“Say your name over two hundred times and discover you are no one.”

“Then they could discuss the possibilities of social inequity, the way your socks always fall down when you're wearing rubber boots, and the importance of being earnest.”

“Then you can blame it on your parents,' I said, smiling. 'Won't that be a relief?”

“He was a heavy breather. You could hear him puffing and blowing into the mike up there like some large and sweaty animal. I don't like that, never have. My father is like that on the telephone. A lot of heavy breathing in your ear, so you can almost smell the scotch and Pall Malls on his breath. It always seems unsanitary and somehow homosexual.”

“Mr. Grace sounded like a very small child, helpless, hopeless. I had made him fuck himself with his own big tool, like one of those weird experiences you read about in the Penthouse Forum. I had taken off his witch doctor's mask and made him human. But I didn't hold it against him. To err is only human, but it's divine to forgive. I believe that sincerely.”

“You've got a shitty habit, you know it? I've noticed it on all those TV drive-safely pitches that you do. You breathe in people's ears. You sound like a stallion in heat, Philbrick. That's a shitty habit. You also sound like you're reading off a teleprompter, even when you're not. You ought to take care of stuff like that. You might save a life.”

“Craziness is only a matter of degree, and there are lots of people besides me who have the urge to roll heads. They go to stock-car races and the horror movies and the wrestling matches they have in Portland Expo. Maybe what she said smacked of all those things, but I admired her for saying out loud, all the same--the price of honesty is always high. She had an admirable grasp of the fundamentals. Besides, she was tiny and pretty.”