Hurried business is bad business.

The creak of bed springs suffering under the weight of a restless man is as lonely a sound as I know.

When you sleep, your dreams are those of a dullard.

I had never been with a woman for longer than a night, and they had always been whores. And while throughout each of these speedy encounters I tried to maintain a friendliness with the women, I knew in my heart it was false, and afterward always felt remote and caved in. I had in the last year or so given up whores entirely, thinking it best to go without rather than pantomime human closeness.

You put a wage behind something, it gives the act a sort of respectability.

Luck was something you either earned or invented through strength of character. You had to come by it honestly; you could not trick or bluff your way into it.