He had waited five years and bought a mansion where he dispensed starlight to casual moths - so that he could 'come over' some afternoon to a stranger's garden.

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.

but I felt that Tom would drift on forever seeking, a little wistfully, for the dramatic turbulence of some irrecoverable football game

I can’t tell you just how wonderful she is. I don’t want you to know. I don’t want any one to know.

I began to like New York, the racy, adventurous feel of it at night, and the satisfaction that the constant flicker of men and women and machines gives to the restless eye.

I like France, where everybody thinks he's Napoleon--down here everybody thinks he's Christ.

The helpless ecstasy of loosing himself in her charm was a powerful opiate rather than a tonic.