“They will not let you have peace, they don't want you to have anything they don't have themselves.”

“The heart with letters on it shining like a light bulb through the trim hole painted in the chest, art history.”

“The reason they invented coffins, to lock the dead in, preserve them, they put makeup on them; they didn't want them spreading or changing into anything else. The stone with the name and date was o...”

“From her handbag she takes a round gilt compact with violets on the cover. She opens it, unclosing her other self, and runs her fingertip around the corners of her mouth, left one, right one; then ...”

“I learned about religion the way most children learned about sex, [in the schoolyard]. . . . They terrified me by telling me there was a dead man in the sky watching everything I did and I retaliat...”

“speech to him was a task, a battle, words mustered behind his beard and issued one at a time, heavy and square like tanks.”

“Every evil starts with 15 volts.”

“My feeling about work is that it's an unnecessary evil, so I've always done my best to avoid it.”

“Neither love nor evil conquers all, but evil cheats more.”

“Stupidity and wisdom meet in the same centre of sentiment and resolution, in the suffering of human accidents.”

“If this man had not twelve thousand a year, he would be a very stupid fellow.”

“There are only 2 paths to happiness in life. Utter Stupidity or Exceptional Wealth.”