He knew it was possible for shame to be nursed and doctored like an illness, if you wanted to keep it separate from the rest of your life, but that didn't mean there'd be any way to keep from knowing it was there.

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

Intelligent, thinking people could take things like this in their stride, just as they took the larger absurdities of deadly dull jobs in the city and deadly dull homes in the suburbs. Economic circumstances might force you to live in this environment, but the important thing was to keep from being contaminated. The important thing, always, was to remember who you were.

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

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

I'm only interested in stories that are about the crushing of the human heart.

There's never been anything funny about a woman dying for love.