"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…"

""I see," she said. And when would she ever learn to stop saying 'I see' about things she didn't see at all?"

"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…"

"Sometimes the world was just too fucking much."