Characters paralyzed by the meaninglessness of modern life still have to drink water from time to time.

Humor is an almost physiological response to fear.

Armistice Day has become Veterans' Day. Armistice Day was sacred. Veterans' Day is not.

The champagne was dead. So it goes.

Mere opinions, in fact, were as likely to govern people's actions as hard evidence, and were subject to sudden reversals as hard evidence could never be. So the Galapagos Islands could be hell in one moment and heaven in the next, and Julius Caesar could be a statesman in one moment and a butcher in the next, and Ecuadorian paper money could be traded for food, shelter, and clothing in one moment and line the bottom of a birdcage in the next, and the universe could be created by God Almighty in one moment and by a big explosion in the next--and on and on.

What's the point of being alive," she said, "if you're not going to communicate?

Let there be nothing harmonious about our children's playthings, lest they grow up expecting peace and order, and be eaten alive.