The waitress had the appearance of a very old hooker who had finally found her place in life

A sense of humor is the main measure of sanity.

When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.

Luck is a very thin wire between survival and disaster, and not many people can keep their balance on it.

The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. And I knew we'd get into that rotten stuff pretty soon. Probably at the next gas station.

Sportswriters are a rude and brainless subculture of fascist drunks, a gang of vicious monkeys jerking off in a zoo cage... more disgusting by nature than maggots oozing out the carcass of a dead animal.

It was the Law of the Sea, they said. Civilization ends at the waterline. Beyond that, we all enter the food chain, and not always right at the top.