"Listen, don’t hate me because I can’t remember some person immediately. Especially when they look like everybody else and talk and dress like everybody else.’ Franny made her voice stop. It sounded to her cavilling and bitchy, and she felt a wave of self-hatred that, quite literally, made her forehead begin to perspire again. But her voice picked up again, in spite of herself. ‘I don’t mean there’s anything horrible about him or anything like that. It’s just that for four solid years I’ve kept seeing Wally Campbells wherever I go. I know that they’re going to be charming, I know when they’re going to start telling you some really nasty gossip about some girl that lives in your dorm, I know when they’re going to ask me what I did over the summer, I know when they’re going to pull up a chair and straddle it backwards and start bragging in a terribly, terribly quiet voice – or name-dropping in a terribly quiet, casual voice. There’s an unwritten law that people in a certain social or financial tax bracket can name-drop as much as they like just as long as they say something terribly disparaging about the person as soon as they’ve dropped his name – that he’s a bastard or a nymphomaniac or take dope all the time, or something horrible.’ She broke off again. She was quiet for a moment, turning the ashtray in her fingers and being careful not to look up and see Lane’s expression … ‘It isn’t just Wally. It could be a girl, for goodness’ sake … 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 that worst part is, if you go bohemian or something crazy like that, you’re conforming just as much as everybody else, only in a different way."

"The cards are stacked (quite properly, I imagine) against all professional aesthetes, and no doubt we all deserve the wordy, academic deaths we all sooner or later die."

"Anyway,” she went on, “the starets tells the pilgrim that if you keep saying that prayer over and over again — you only have to just do it with your lips at first — then eventually what happens, the prayer becomes self-active. Something happens after a while. I don’t know what, but something happens, and the words get synchronized with the person’s heartbeats, and then you’re actually praying without ceasing. Which has a really tremendous, mystical effect on your whole outlook. I mean that’s the whole point of it, more or less. I mean you do it to purify your whole outlook and get an absolutely new conception of what everything’s about."

"You had the exact same goddam freakish upbringing I did, and if you don’t know by this time what kind of skull you want when you’re dead, and what you have to do to earn it — I mean if you don’t at least know by this time that if you’re an actress you’re supposed to act, then what’s the use of talking?"

"You’d better get busy, though, buddy. The goddamn sands run out on you every time you turn around. I know what I’m talking about. You’re lucky if you get time to sneeze in this goddamn phenomenal world. I used to worry about that. I don’t worry about it very much any more. At least I’m still in love with Yorick’s skull. At least I always have time enough to stay in love with Yorick’s skull. I want an honorable goddamn skull when I’m dead, buddy. I hanker after an honorable goddamn skull like Yorick’s."

"I’ve taken your advice and resorted to the dictionary a lot lately, so if it cramps my style you’re to blame."

"I’m sorry. I’m awful,” she said. “I’ve just felt so destructive all week. It’s awful, I’m horrible."