Whoever is writing in the United States is using the American Dream as an ironical pole of his story. People elsewhere tend to accept, to a far greater degree anyway, that the conditions of life are hostile to mans pretensions.

Flight Reservation Systems decide whether or not you exist. If your information isn't in their database, then you simply don't get to go anywhere.

How to live had started out as an analytical problem of how to place himself so as to intercept the flow of money in the society.

The jungle is dark but full of diamonds, Willy.

Chris: I don't know why it is, but every time I reach out for something I want, I have to pull back because other people will suffer.

... vulgarity has no nation.

The closer a man approaches tragedy the more intense is his concentration of emotion upon the fixed point of his commitment, which is to say the closer he approaches what in life we call fanaticism.