“She left me the way people leave a hotel room. A hotel room is a place to be when you are doing something else. Of itself it is of no consequence to one's major scheme. A hotel room is convenient. But its convenience is limited to the time you need it while you are in that particular town on that particular business; you hope it is comfortable, but prefer, rather, that it be anoymous. It is not, after all, where you live.”

“Everybody is corrupted by hotel rooms. You can't help it. It's the only place in the world where you walk in and the first think you do is steal everything before you take your coat off.”

“I knew it. I knew it. Born in a hotel room - and God damn it - died in a hotel room.”

“At the hotel we had separate rooms, but in the middle of the night she came sobbing into mine, and we made it up very gently. You see, she had absolutely nowhere else to go.”

“Hotel rooms inhabit a separate moral universe.”

“Congratulations," I said. "It's so wonderful to write a book." "I walked all the way here," she said. "I started at midnight. I would have gotten here sooner if I weren't so old." "Where do you live?" I said. "The Kit Carson Hotel," she said. "And I've written a book." Then she handed it proudly to me as if it were the most precious thing in the world. And it was. It was a loose-leaf notebook of the type that you find everywhere in America. There is no place that does not have them. There was a heavy label pasted on the cover and written in broad green crayon across the label was the title: GROWING FLOWERS BY CANDLELIGHT IN HOTEL ROOMS BY MRS. CHARLES FINE ADAMS”