You take a really sleepy man, Esmé, and he always stands a chance of again becoming a man with all his fac — with all his f-a-c-u-l-t-i-e-s intact.

Maybe there's a trapdoor under my chair, and I'll just disappear.

The existence of God, the why of life, was all that really only a question of glands?

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

Do you know what I was smiling at? You wrote down that you were a writer by profession. It sounded to me like the loveliest euphemism I had ever heard. When was writing ever your profession? It's never been anything but your religion.

Her joke of a name aside, her general unprettiness aside, she was, in terms of permanently memorable, immoderately perceptive, small-area faces, a stunning and final girl.

I'm sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody.