“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.”

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

“He was going to make this happen. His feet and his head was set, and when he got that way, he always did what he said he was going to do. It was his pride. The only one he had.”

“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.”

“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.”

“It'll be your damnation, boy. You'll wear out a hundred pairs of boots on your way to hell.”

“Now the only way out is straight up to Heaven.”