"Somebody has said that woman's place is in the wrong. That's fine. What the wrong needs is a woman's presence and a woman's touch. She is far better equipped than men to set it right."

"If I have sometimes seemed to make fun of Woman, I assure you it has only been for the purpose of egging her on."

"Humor and pathos, tears and laughter are, in the highest expression of human character and achievement, inseparable."

"It is true, I confess, that if a male character of my invention started across the stage to disrobe a virgin criminally (ah, euphemism to end euphemisms!), he would probably catch his foot in the piano stool and end up playing "Button Up Your Overcoat" on the black keys."

"She came naturally by her confused and groundless fears, for her own mother lived the latter years of her life in the horrible suspicion that electricity was dripping invisibly all over the house."

"In order to be eligible to play it was necessary for him to keep up in his studies, a very difficult matter, for while he was not dumber than an ox he was not any smarter."

"I do not have a psychiatrist and I do not want one, for the simple reason that if he listened to me long enough, he might become disturbed."

"The dog has got more fun out of Man than Man has got out of the dog, for the clearly demonstrable reason that Man is the more laughable of the two animals."

"The dog has seldom been successful in pulling Man up to its level of sagacity, but Man has frequently dragged the dog down to his."

"I am not a dog lover. A dog lover to me means a dog that is in love with another dog."

"He picked out this sentence in a New Yorker casual of mine: "After dinner, the men moved into the living room," and he wanted to know why I, or the editors, had put in the comma. I could explain that one all right. I wrote back that this particular comma was Ross's way of giving the men time to push back their chairs and stand up."

"From now on, I think it is safe to predict, neither the Democratic nor the Republican Party will ever nominate for President a candidate without good looks, stage presence, theatrical delivery, and a sense of timing."

"A drawing is always dragged down to the level of its caption."

"..."That disease he has does an awful job on you. Your lungs fill up.""

"Now nuns have blended into everybody else or else faded away. Vocations drying up, nobody wants to be selfless any more, everybody wants their fun. No more nuns, no more rabbis. No more good people, waiting to have their fun in the afterlife. The thing about the afterlife, it kept this life within bounds somehow, like the Russians. Now there's just Japan, and technology, and the profit motive, and getting all you can while you can."

"[Dr Breit] "It's irrational, but so's the human species.""

"Charlie interrupts impatiently, "Pain is where it's at for punks. Mutilation, self-hatred, slam dancing. For these kids today, ugly is beautiful. That's their way of saying what a lousy world we're giving them. No more rain forests. Toxic waste. You know the drill.""

"Charlie asks her for a Perrier with lime. She says that San Pellegrino is what they have. He says it's all the same to him. Fancy water is fancy water."

"...the Japanese interest him professionally. How do they and the Germans do it, when America's going down the tubes?"

"He supposes they pretty much have the picture. Most people do, in life. People know more than they let on."

"You can't say anything honest to women, they have minds like the FBI."

"[Thelma] "...We're too old to keep being foolish.""

"[Harry, to Thelma, about Janet] "She never really figured out how the world is put together but she's still working at it.""

"[Thelma] "...You make your own punishments in life, I honest to God believe that. You get exactly what you deserve. God sees to it.""

"[about the past, and Mary Ann, before Harry went to do his two years in the army] Maybe she sensed something about him. A loser. Though at eighteen he looked like a winner."

"[Nelson, to Harry] "...I keep feeling hassled.""

"[Harry, talking about the doctor who came to the ward and then went away.] "That guy has a thing about potato chips and hot dogs. If God didn't want us to eat salt and fat, why did He make them taste so good?""

"He didn't have a worry in the world back then. He was in paradise and didn't know it."

"His wife is, it occurs to Harry, a channel that can't be switched. The same slightly too-high forehead, the same dumb stubborn slot of a mouth, day after day, same time, same station."

"[at the hospital, Janice speaking to Dr Olman in Harry's presence in the ward] "What's wrong with his heart, exactly?" Janice asks."

"[Nelson] "...I get none of the things a man's supposed to get from a wife.""

"The papers exaggerate. They exaggerate everything, just to sell papers. The government exaggerates, to keep our minds off what morons they are."

"When you feel irresistable, you're hard to resist."

"She closes her eyes and wordlessly thinks of all the misery sex has caused the world..."

"When she was a girl nobody had money but people had dreams."

"Rabbit feels as if the human race is a vast colourful jostling bristling parade in which he is limping and falling behind."

"[Judy, 8, is watching TV] He tells Judy, "Better pack it in, sweetie. Another big day tomorrow: we're going to go to the beach and sailing." But his voice comes out listless, and perhaps that is the saddest loss time brings, the lessening of excitement about anything."

"[Re Florida] Just not being senile is considered great down here."

"Your children's losing battle with time seems even sadder than your own."

"Who wants to fish, if you're halfway civilised? Dangling some dead meat in front of some poor brainless thing and then pulling him up by a hook in the roof of his mouth? Cruellest thing people do is fish."

"[Nelson] "...One nice thing about Florida, it makes Pennsylvania look unspoiled.""

"He learned this much selling cars: offer the customer something he doesn't want, to make what he half-wants look better."

"Figure out where you're going before you go there: he was told that a long time ago."

"You don't know what you don't know."

"...there ought to be a law that we change identities and families every ten years or so."

"I mean," he says, "how the hell do you think it feels? Sitting there and having the plane explode?"