“She wished he weren't so damned fit. Running away was a lot harder when the guy you were fleeing kept in such an excellent shape. -Cath Talarico”

“I wasn't sleeping on the streets at night. Of course, there were a lot of good people sleeping in the streets. They weren't fools, they just didn't fit into the needed machinery of the moment. And those needs kept altering.”

“Mom had considered Cath a bit of a hoochie, but the truth was that Cath always opened her heart when she opened her legs.”

“She was a widow, and he stripped himself naked while she went to fetch some of her husband's clothes. But before he could put them on, the police were hammering on the front door with their billy clubs. So the fugitive hid on top of a rafter. When the woman let in the police, though, his oversize testicles hung down in full view."Trout paused again.The police asked the woman where the guy was. The woman said she didn't know what guy they were talking about," said Trout. "One of the cops saw the testicles hanging down from a rafter and asked what they were. She said they were Chinese temple bells. He believed her. He said he 'd always wanted to hear Chinese temple bells. "He gave them a whack with his billy club, but there was no sound. So he hit them again, a lot harder, a whole lot harder. Do you know what the guy on the rafter shrieked?" Trout asked me. I said I didn't. "He shrieked, 'TING-A-LING, YOU SON OF A BITCH!”

“When the sales guys run the company, the product guys don't matter so much, and a lot of them just turn off.”

“There was, he thought, probably something in the idea that there were only a few people in the world. There were lots of bodies, but only a few people. That's why you kept running into the same ones.”