When I left Merle was wearing a bungalow apron and rolling pie crust. She came to the door wiping her hands on the apron and kissed me on the mouth and began to cry and ran back into the house, leaving the doorway empty [...] I had a funny feeling as I saw the house disappear, as though I had written a poem and it was very good and I had lost it and would never remember it again. (p. 262)

I do a great deal of research, especially in the apartments of tall blondes.

He looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food.

Chess is as elaborate a waste of human intelligence as you can find outside an advertising agency.

If you're not tough it's hard to survive in this world; and if you're not kind then you don't deserve to survive.

LA doesn't have the heart of a paper cup.

Throughout the history of commercial life nobody has ever quite liked the commission man. His function is too vague, his presence always seems one too many, his profit looks too easy, and even when you admit that he has a necessary function, you feel that this function is, as it were, a personification of something that in an ethical society would not need to exist. If people could deal with one another honestly, they would not need agents.