It haunted him all night, while he slept alone; it was still there in the morning, when he swallowed his coffee and backed down the driveway in the crumpled old Ford. And riding to work, one of the youngest and healthiest passengers on the train, he sat with the look of a man condemned to a very slow, painless death. He felt middle-aged.

It's a disease. Nobody thinks or feels or cares any more; nobody gets excited or believes in anything except their own comfortable little God damn mediocrity.

She just happened to feel like it. Wasn’t that after all, the only reason there was? Had she ever had a less selfish, more complicated reason for doing anything in her life?

...you found you were saying yes when you meant no, and “We’ve got to be together in this thing” when you meant the very opposite ... and then you were face to face, in total darkness, with the knowledge that you didn’t know who you were. And how could anyone else be blamed for that?

Hard work, is the best medicine yet devised for all the ills of man- and of woman.

...his job was the very least important part of his life, never to be mentioned except in irony.

He couldn't even tell whether he was angry or contrite, whether it was forgiveness he wanted or the power to forgive.