“I've tried to believe, but I don't, I can't, and there's no use pretending.”

“I don't think I've ever drunk champagne before breakfast before. With breakfast on several occasions, but never before before.”

“I suppose you think I'm very brazen. Or très fou. Or something.'Not at all.'She seemed disappointed. 'Yes, you do. Everybody does. I don't mind. It's useful.”

“Poor slob without a name. It's a little inconvenient, his not having a name. But I haven't the right to give him one: he'll have to wait until he belongs to somebody. We just sort of took up by the river one day, we don't belong to each other: he's an independent, and so am I. I don't want to own anything until I know I've found the place where me and things belong together.”

“There's something really the matter with most people who wear tattoos. There's at least some terrible story. I know from experience that there's always something terribly flawed about people who are tattooed, above some little something that Johnny had done in the Navy, even though that's a bad sign...It's terrible. Psychologically it's crazy. Most people who are tattooed, it's the sign of some feeling of inferiority, they're trying to establish some macho identification for themselves.”

“[Y]outh is hardly human: it can't be, for the young never believe they will die...especially would they never believe that death comes, and often, in forms other than the natural one.”

“I believe more in the scissors than I do in the pencil.”