There isn’t a nightclub in the world that you can sit in for a long time unless you can at least buy some liquor and get drunk. Or unless you’re with some girl that really knocks you out.

It was a very stupid thing to do, I'll admit, but I hardly didn't even know I was doing it.

I know he's dead! Don't you think I know that? I can still like him, though, can't I? Just because somebody's dead, you don't just stop liking them, for God's sake--especially if they were about a thousand times nicer than the people you know that're alive and all.

... even the most sublimely accomplished non-stop talker can't consistently please.

I like it when somebody gets excited about something. It's nice.

It's full of phonies, and all you do is study so that you can learn enough to be smart enough to be able to buy a goddam Cadillac some day, and you have to keep making believe you give a damn if the football team loses, and all you do is talk about girls and liquor and sex all day, and everybody sticks together in these dirty little goddam cliques.

If you do something too good, then, after a while, if you don't watch it, you start showing off. And then you're not as good any more.