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.

And do you know a funny thing? I'm almost fifty years old and I've never understood anything in my whole life.

Dying for love might be pitiable, but it wasn't much different, finally, from any other kind of dying.

if you don’t try at anything, you can’t fail… it takes back bone to lead the life you want

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.

He took each fact as it came and let it slip painlessly into the back of his mind, thinking, Okay, okay, I'll think about that one later; and that one; and that one; so that the alert, front part of his mind could remain free enough to keep him in command of the situation.

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