If there is an amateur reader still left in the world – or anybody who just reads and runs – I ask him or her, with untellable affection and gratitude, to split the dedication of this book four ways with my wife and children.
Listen, if you’re not going to be a nun or something, you might as well laugh.
Life is a game, boy. Life is a game that one plays according to the rules.
You think of the book you’d most like to be reading, and then you sit down and shamelessly write it.
She was there, and she was the whole city, and that’s that.
I’m one of the little foxes that spoil the grapes.
It happens to be one of those days when I see everybody in the family, including myself, through the wrong end of a telescope.
If you weren’t around, I’d probably be someplace way the hell off. In the woods or some goddamn place. You’re the only reason I’m around, practically.
I know. I’m very hard to talk to. I realize that.
Her joke of a name aside, her general unprettiness aside, she was, in terms of permanently memorable, immoderately perceptive, small-area faces, a stunning and final girl.
If you sat around there long enough and heard all the phonies applauding and all, you got to hate everybody in the world, I swear you did.
People never think anything is anything really. I’m getting goddam sick of it.
I was surrounded by jerks. I’m not kidding.
I feel overwhelmingly grateful to them, but I don’t know what to do with their invisible gifts.
God, I wish you could have been there.
Some people you shouldn’t kid, even if they deserve it.
Let’s just try to have a marvelous time this weekend. I mean not try to analyze everything to death for once, if possible. Especially me. I love you.
But you can’t always tell – with somebody’s mother, I mean. Mothers are all slightly insane.
Some game. If you get on the side where all the hot-shots are, then it’s a game, all right – I’ll admit that. But if you get on the other side, where there aren’t any hot-shots, then what’s a game about it? Nothing. No game.
They didn’t act like people and they didn’t act like actors. It’s hard to explain. They acted more like they knew they were celebrities and all. I mean they were good, but they were too good.
People always clap for the wrong reasons.