“Getting down to brass tacks, how in the Hell are you going to explain general American n- 'I' except genetically?”

“I can't understand these chaps who go round American universities explaining how they write poems: It's like going round explaining how you sleep with your wife.”

“In the end the American dream boils down to what? I'm getting mine and to hell with you.”

“The hell with the newspapers. Nobody reads the letters to the editor column except the nuts. It's enough to get you down.”

“Mahon's wife stared down at us. Her hands went to her hips. "Which one of you idiots wants to explain to me what the hell is going on?"
With great effort I raised my arm and pointed in Mahon's general direction. "Him.”

“We have a situation where we have our inner cities, African- Americans, Hispanics are living in hell because it's so dangerous. You walk down the street, you get shot.”

“You're Clary Fray. You go charging into every situation without knowing how the hell it's going to turn out, and then you get through it on sheer guts and craziness.”

“If I had to lay bets, my bet would be that everything is going to go to hell, but, you know, what else have we got except hope?”

“You go up to a man, and you say, ‘How are things going, Joe?’ And he says, ‘Oh fine, fine—couldn’t be better.’ And you look into his eyes, and you see things really couldn’t be much worse. When you get right down to it, everybody’s having a perfectly lousy time of it, and I mean everybody. And the hell of it is, nothing seems to help much.”

“He leaned down and whispered to me: No matter how thin you get, no matter how short you cut your hair, it's still going to be you underneath. And he let go of my arm and walked back down the hall.”