“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 don't know what good it is to know so much and be smart as whips and all if it doesn't make you happy.”

“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...”

“I’m just sick of ego, ego, ego. My own and everybody else’s. I’m sick of everybody that wants to get somewhere, do something distinguished and all, be somebody interesting. It’s disgusting.”