He was of the faith chiefly in the sense that the church he currently did not attend was Catholic.

Doing what you wanted to do was the only training, and the only preliminary, needed for doing more of what you wanted to do.

Jake was close to tears. In that moment he saw the world in its true light, as a place where nothing had ever been any good and nothing of significance done: no art worth a second look, no philosophy of the slightest appositeness, no law but served the state, no history that gave an inkling of how it had been and what had happened. And no love, only egotism, infatuation and lust.

The first, indeed the only, requirement of a diet is that it should lose you weight without reducing your alcoholic intake by the smallest degree.

Sex is a momentary itch, love never lets you go.

Feeling a tremendous rakehell, and not liking myself much for it, and feeling rather a good chap for not liking myself much for it, and not liking myself at all for feeling rather a good chap.

A German wine label is one of the things life's too short for, a daunting testimony to that peculiar nation's love of detail and organization.