"Silversmith lay in bed sipping seltzer and thinking deep brooding thoughts about the impossibility of happiness and the elusiveness of satisfaction. Despite having the world’s luxuries set before him—or because of it—he was bored and had been for weeks. It seemed damned unfair to him, to be able to get anything you wanted, but to be unable to enjoy what you could get. When you came right down to it, life was a disappointment, and the best it had to offer was never quite good enough. The roast duck was never as crisp as advertised, and the water in the swimming pool was always a shade too warm or too cold. How elusive was the quest for quality! For ten dollars you could buy a pretty fair steak; for a hundred dollars you could get a really good Porterhouse; for a thousand dollars you could buy a kilo of Kobe beef that had been massaged by the hands of consecrated virgins, together with a genius chef to prepare it. And it would be very good indeed. But not a thousand dollars good. The more you paid, the less progress you made toward that quintessence of beef that that the angels eat when God throws his yearly banquet for the staff."