“You’ll consider what you did wrong & bookend your reflections with hunger – no supper, no breakfast.”

“Here is another one ready to die for you, Roland. What great wrong did you ever do that you should inspire such terrible loyalty in so many?”

“Reading at meals is considered rude in polite society, but if you expect to succeed as a writer, rudeness should be the second-to-least of your concerns. The least of all should be polite society and what it expects.”

“Hunger is the piston of art.”

“Laughter, Susannah would later reflect, is like a hurricane: once it reaches a certain point, it becomes self-feeding, self-supporting. You laugh not because the jokes are funny but because your own condition is funny.”

“Friends come in and out of your life like busboys in a restaurant, did you ever notice that?”

“If you haven't considered it already, consider it now: there is every possibility that some of us, or all of us, may live and triumph, only to stand trial for murder.”