“He doesn't want to hurt anybody , you know. He is good, nice, kind. But he has got a small heart --- to small to hold much feeling. Maybe just enough for himself, but not enough feeling to give out to anybody. He couldn't really love anybody, that man. - Suzie Wong (The World of Suzie Wong)”

“You're in the democratic West now, lady. Anybody's as good as anybody else as long as he's got the dough to prove it.”

“Bertie," he said, "I want your advice.""Carry on.""At least, not your advice, because that wouldn't be much good to anybody. I mean, you're a pretty consummate old ass, aren't you? Not that I want to hurt your feelings of course.""No, no, I see that.”

“And he did see--that life was rotten, that there were no heroes, really, and that you couldn't trust anybody, not even yourself.”

“I don't think anybody can teach anybody anything. I think that you learn it, but the young writer that is as I say demon-driven and wants to learn and has got to write, he don't know why, he will learn from almost any source that he finds. He will learn from older people who are not writers, he will learn from writers, but he learns it -- you can't teach it.”

“He would have felt safe if alongside the Dentrassis' underwear, the piles of Sqornshellous mattresses and the man from Betelgeuse holding up a small yellow fish and offering to put it in his ear he had been able to see just a small packet of cornflakes. But he couldn't, and he didn't feel safe.”