Warren Cox, God knew, was no prize; a commercial person, a sales person, the kind of man who said things like "x numbers of dollars". At lunch today, laboriously trying to explain some business procedure, he had said "x number of dollars" three times.

Never say anything that doesn't improve on silence.

Remember what Anatole France said about the dog masturbating on your leg--'Sure, it's honest, but who needs it?

Do you know what the definition of insane is? Yes. It’s the inability to relate to another human being. It’s the inability to love.

He had won but he didn't feel like a winner.

Synchronize watches at oh six hundred' says the infantry captain, and each of his huddled lieutenants finds respite from fear in the act of bringing two tiny pointers into jeweled alignment while tons of heavy artillery go fluttering overhead: the prosaic, civilian-looking dial of the watch has restored, however briefly, an illusion of personal control. Good, it counsels, looking tidily up from the hairs and veins of each terribly vulnerable wrist; fine: so far, everything's happening right on time.

If you haven't written a novel by the time you're forty you never will!