“She was someone who heard each grain in the hour-glass, she felt the passing seconds like sandpaper against her softest skin. Time actually seemed to hurt her, and people helped her get through it....”

“He'd learned something. Life was booby-trapped and there was no easy passage through. You had to jump from colour to colour, from happiness to happiness. And all those possible explosions in betwee...”

“The strong man lit a cigarette. It looked too frail for his hand. They looked like King Kong and Fay Wray, that hand, that cigarette. There was a movie going on right under his nose and he didn't e...”

“This would have once been a place for contemplation. He looked up at the towers surrounding him. Many of the dead bodies had been removed. Their places had been taken by the living.”

“Jed thought he understood. It was like when his radios were thrown away. You could shrug your shoulders, put on a face that said you didn't care, but you did and nothing could ever be secure again....”

“The fig tree had dropped its fruit all over the ground. Ripe figs lay in the dust, exploded, bloody, as if the sky had rained organs.”

“Sex can be used either for self-affirmation or for self-transcendence either to intensify the ego and consolidate the social persona by some kind of conspicuous embarkation and heroic conquest, or...”

“He didn't know all that much about how the machinery worked anyway. Such knowledge was for specialists. In war, as in love, he was a fearless, happy-go-lucky adventurer.”

“If she did experience sex--or something close to it--in high school, I'm sure it would have been less out of sexual desire or love than literary curiosity.”

“There is nothing quite like this novel with its rage and ragings, its discontent and angry restlessness. Wuthering Heights is a virgin's story.”