“What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever yo...”

“He said you were the only one who was bitter about S.'s suicide and the only one who really forgave him for it. The rest of us, he said, were outwardly unbitter and inwardly unforgiving.”

“It's partly true, too, but it isn't all true. People always think something's all true.”

“And I can't be running back and fourth forever between grief and high delight.”

“I'm sick of just liking people. I wish to God I could meet somebody I could respect.”

“I didn't want any degrees if all the ill-read literates and radio announcers and pedagogical dummies I knew had them by the peck.”

“I don’t think it would have all got me quite so down if just once in a while—just once in a while—there was at least some polite little perfunctory implication that knowledge should lead to...”

“It's everybody, I mean. Everything everybody does is so — I don't know — not wrong, or even mean, or even stupid necessarily. But just so tiny and meaningless and — sad-making. And the worst...”