There’s nothing fragile about this one. That ain’t a fragile nose or mouth or chin, and yet it’s female, more female than them fragile-pretty types who look more like ornaments than girls.

He craved Mildred’s body and he couldn’t do without it, and that was the one and only reason he went on living with her.

For the sum of everything was a circle, and the circle was labelled Zero.

It’s just that I’m curious, that’s all. He usually walks alone” “Yeah, he’s a loner, all right,” the waitress murmured. “Even when he’s with someone, he’s alone.

What it amounts to, is you’ve been listed minus zero, strictly useless, absolutely worthless. The tip off came when he didn’t even bother to have you thrown out. I guess that puts you right at the bottom, even lower than Carp and the other mischief-makers. At least they get some attention, they rate high enough to get bounced. All you’re getting is the look; the look that says in no uncertain terms that you’ve been junked.

I think the way to stop it is to shrug it off. Or take it with your tongue in your cheek. Sure, that’s the system. At any rate, it’s the system that works for you. It’s the automatic control board that keeps you out there where nothing matters, where it’s only you and the keyboard and nothing else. Because it’s gotta be that way. You gotta stay clear of anything serious.

The trouble with people is they don’t understand people.

At three in the morning it was dead around here and the windows of the mansion were black, the mansion dark purple and solemn against the moonlit velvet, green of gently sloping lawn.

He told himself she wasn’t really such a bad person, she was just a pest, she was sticky, there was something misplaced in her make-up, something that kept her from fading clear of people when they wanted to be in the clear.

A cat came out of an alley, took a look at all the snow, and went back in. Farther on up the street a fat man, aproned and puffing, emerged from a restaurant and whiffed the cold air and gazed yearningly at the sky. As though even the dreams were up there, much too far away.