You're painfully alive in a drugged and dying culture.

The Revolutionary Hill Estates had not been designed to accommodate a tragedy. Even at night, as if on purpose, the development held no looming shadows and no gaunt silhouettes. It was invincibly cheerful, a toyland of white and pastel houses whose bright, uncurtained windows winked blandly through a dappling of green and yellow leaves … A man running down these streets in desperate grief was indecently out of place.

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

If my work has a theme, I suspect it is a simple one: that most human beings are inescapably alone, and therein lies their tragedy.

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

Why did everything always change when all you wanted, all you had ever humbly asked of whatever God there might be, was that certain things be allowed to stay the same?

Anybody's marriage might benefit from an occasional embargo on talk.