It was simply a shy man’s way of holding someone else’s gaze. We were, it finally dawned on me, the two shyest persons in the world.

You are the only person I’d like to say goodbye to when I die, because only then will this thing I call my life make any sense. And if I should hear that you died, my life as I know it, the me who is speaking with you now, will cease to exist.

I am average in love. I say things like "I love you" and "I need you I really do." I say them too quickly, like an asshole.

"You're not Czechoslovakian, I hope," he would say, always the same joke, and point to the sign on the cash register which said, SORRY, NO CHECKS.

Basically, I realized, I was living in that awful stage of life from the age of twenty-six to thirty-seven known as stupidity.

"Yes," he said, realizing that faced with the large questions of life and not finding large answers, one must settle for makeshift, little answers, just as on any given day a person must at least eat someting, even if it was not marvelous and huge.

Kaffe, sa Fjomsedyret.
Grøt, sa hemulens tante. - Kaffe drikker man først når man er gammel og skjelvende.
Jeg kjente en som døde av grøt, mumlet Jokseren. - Han fikk den i halsen og ble kvalt.

Han er født lat, forklarte Fredriksen. - Må forbys å hjelpe til. Da gjør han det. Kanskje.

Han hadde rett. Det var sånn jeg var. Sjelen min gikk alltid med åpen buksesmekk, (...)

Den gamle konen som solgte leskedrikker ved musikkpaviljongen samlet langsomt alle kveldens skygger i skjørtet sitt.

I en slik begravelse opplever man at alle løfter høytidelig på hatten for en. Sånt er hyggelig. Men da gjelder det å holde fasaden i orden og anlegge den rette mine, slik at ingen ser at man flirer inne i seg. For det er tillatt. Inne i seg kan man gjøre hva man vil.

Personlig var jeg ikke spesielt intelligent, men jeg var iallfall blitt fornuftig nok til å gå inn for å være feig.

Nate had often been dismayed not by Francesca in particular but by the vast number of women whose legs, like the doors to an exclusive club, parted only at the proof of a man's success.

Nate wanted to argue, if only he had someone to argue with, that women want to be in relationships because on a gut level they don't like being alone. They aren't noble, high-minded individuals, concerned about the well-being of the nation or the continuity of the species. They simply swoon at images of cooking dinner together, of some loving boyfriend playfully swatting their ass with a dishtowel while the two of them chop vegetables and sip wine and listen to NPR (preferably in a jointly owned prewar apartment with an updated kitchen).

When he was younger, he had imagined that as he grew up, he would become progressively less shallow and women's looks wouldn't matter as much. Now that he was, more or less, grown up, he realized it wasn't going to happen. He wasn't even particularly shallow.

Why is it that twenty-four hours in the company of your family is capable of reducing you to a teenager?

He kept Virgil's sleeping bag in the back of the truck and slept in the fields to save money and hoping to catch pneumonia or be bitten by a snake.

"Man does not live by bread alone," Duddy said.

"Don't shout at me," Max said, making a fist. "When I lose my temper I lose my temper."

"A man without land is nobody," he said.