“Ten men in our country could buy the whole world and ten million can't buy enough to eat.”

“Life can't be all bad when for ten dollars you can buy all the Beethoven sonatas and listen to them for ten years.”

“It never failed—I'd buy a new journal, write like a madwoman for ten pages, then lose total interest in the process. Three months later, I'd start the whole process all over again. I think I just liked buying new notebooks.”

“I'm a rich man, Brick, yep, I'm a mighty rich man. Y'know how much I'm worth? Guess, Brick! Guess how much I'm worth! Close to ten million in cash an' blue chip stocks, outside, mind you, of twenty-eight thousand acres of the richest land this side of the valley Nile! But a man can't buy his life with it, he can't buy back his life with it when his life has been spent, that's one thing not offered in the Europe fire-sale or in the American markets or any markets on earth, a man can't buy his life with it, he can't buy back his life when his life is finished...Big Daddy: (pp. 65)”

“The whole world is dying. Just too slowly and naturally for my liking. Somebody should poison the food by genetically modifying it somehow. But even if that happened, nobody would be stupid enough to buy it—let alone eat it—would they?”

“Lola swore she would never return to that terrible country. On one of our last nights as novios she said, Ten million Trujillos is all we are.”