“It was making me desperate, thinking I was going to have to find a job. A job for Christ’s sake.”

“She was hidden, she was private, she was like one of those little Russian eggs, infinitely ornate inside. It was her egotism. He’d found it.”

“it’s impossible for me even to guess / since as they say / he really has no country of his own.”

“It was a glimpse of an adult world so alien to me; what could I think?”

“Comedy was a theatrical form Paul had never pursued; he had always been more serious, a tragedian.”