"Wow," he said. "Now you've said it. The hopeless emptiness. Hell, plenty of people are on to the emptiness part; out …"

"I mean talk about decadence," he declared, "how decadent can a society get? Look at it this way. This country's proba…"

"How small and neat and comically serious the other men looked, with their gray-flecked crew cuts and their button-dow…"

"and for an hour or two they talked in circles."

"Most people do the best they can."

"I still had this idea that there was a whole world of marvelous golden people somewhere, as far ahead of me as the se…"

"You know?" he said. "This is the kind of thing that really—" he paused, examining the wisp of smoke that curled from …"

"After a while he stopped listening. His ears took in only the rise and fall of her voice, the elaborate, familiar, en…"

"Late in the afternoon the company cooks brought food up to the village for the first hot meal they'd had since Belgiu…"

"Sometimes the world was just too fucking much."