Getting yelled at by a furious woman should be treated as a semiformal occasion.

A man who discovers his pants are on fire tends to have very little time to worry about somebody else's box of matches

But of course, there's no rest for the wicked, which I certainly am; as I said, no rest for the wicked.

As I've said, freedom is really an illusion. Anytime we think we have a real choice, it just means we haven't seen the shotgun aimed at our navel.

Nothing in life is fair. Fair is a dirty word and I'll thank you not to use that language around me.

When faced with people who have very limited conversational skills and no apparent desire to cultivate any it's always easier to simply go along.

And then more quiet, silence so deep it almost drowned out the roar of the night music that pounded away in my secret self.