You're lucky if you get time to sneeze in this goddam phenomenal world.

It was just terrible! And the worst part was, I knew what a bore I was being, I knew how I was depressing people, or even hurting their feelings- but I just couldn't stop! I just could not stop picking!

I don't even know what I was running for—I guess I just felt like it.

This is a people shooting hat," I said. "I shoot people in this hat.

The Great Gatsby' [...] was my 'Tom Sawyer' when I was twelve [....]

I have a feeling that you're riding for some kind of a terrible, terrible fall. But I don't honestly know what kind.... It may be the kind where, at the age of thirty, you sit in some bar hating everybody who comes in looking as if he might have played football in college. Then again, you may pick up just enough education to hate people who say, 'It's a secret between he and I.' Or you may end up in some business office, throwing paper clips at the nearest stenographer. I just don't know.

Sensitive. That killed me. That guy Morrow was about as sensitive as a toilet seat.