“I had a terrible education. I attended a school for emotionally disturbed teachers.”

“My education was dismal. I went to a series of schools for mentally disturbed teachers.”

“I was nauseous and tingly all over. I was either in love or I had smallpox.”

“Pale, nervous girls with black-rimmed glasses and blunt-cut hair lolled around on sofas, riffling Penguin Classics provocatively… But it wasn’t just intellectual experiences. They were peddling emotional ones, too. For fifty bucks, I learned, you could ‘relate without getting close.’ For a hundred, a girl would lend you her Bartok records, have dinner, and then let you watch while she had an anxiety attack.”

“There's an old joke - um... two elderly women are at a Catskill mountain resort, and one of 'em says, "Boy, the food at this place is really terrible." The other one says, "Yeah, I know; and such small portions." Well, that's essentially how I feel about life - full of loneliness, and misery, and suffering, and unhappiness, and it's all over much too quickly.”

“His lack of education is more than compensated for by his keenly developed moral bankruptcy.”

“I took a puff of the wrong cigarette at a fraternity dance once, and the cops had to get me, y'know. I broke two teeth trying to give a hickie to the Statue of Liberty.”