"Bud's relationship with the female sex was governed by a gallimaufry of primal impulses, dim suppositions, deranged t…"

"Apthorp was not a formal organization that could be looked up in a phone book; in financial cant, it referred to a st…"

"He had some measure of the infuriating trait that causes a young man to be a nonconformist for its own sake and found…"

"Along with many other Midwesterners, Finkle-McGraw put in a few weeks building levees out of sandbags and plastic she…"

""And what makes one man's life more interesting than another’s?" "In general, I should say that we find unpredictable…"

"The seed of this idea had been germinating in Hackworth's mind for some months now but had not bloomed, for the same …"

"What's a matter compiler?" "We call it the M.C. for short." "Why?" "Because M.C. stands for matter compiler, or so th…"

"We ignore the blackness of outer space and pay attention to the stars, especially if they seem to order themselves in…"

"Ordering matter was the sole endeavor of Life, whether it was a jumble of self-replicating molecules in the primordia…"

"The bells of St. Mark's were ringing changes up on the mountain when Bud skated over to the mod parlor to upgrade his…"