The 21st chapter gives the novel the quality of genuine fiction, an art founded on the principle that human beings change. ----- "A Clockwork Orange Resucked" intro to first full American version 1986

Oh, my god. My non-committal boyfriend, who I was just fucking this morning, that I want to spend the rest of my life with, is your Mr. Wonderful. He’s your ‘nice,’ mystery man. Jesus.

TO MAKE A LONG STORY SHORTTo make a long story shortI leave all my possessionsto the Municipal Slaughterhouseto the Special Unit of the Police Departmentto Lucky Dog LottoSo now if you want you can shoot

The best way to measure the loss of intellectual sophistication - this "nerdification," to put it bluntly - is in the growing disappearance of sarcasm, as mechanic minds take insults a bit too literally.

The beauty and mystery of this world only emerges through affection, attention, interest and compassion . . . open your eyes wide and actually see this world by attending to its colors, details and irony.

girlsplease give yourbodies and yourlivestothe young menwhodeserve thembesidesthere isno wayI would welcometheintolerabledullsenseless hellyou would bringmeandI wish youluckin bedandoutbut notinminethankyou.

He gave me a warm smile, and I blinked, realizing he was cute. I'd never really hadthe luxury of noticing cuteness or lack thereof in guys. Mostly it was the lethal/nonlethal distinction that I went with

So if there is something on the planet that is worth living for, I'd better not miss it, because once you're dead, it's too late for regrets, and if you die by mistake, that is really, really dumb.

Trapped. Sinking. Can't be myself. Made into what other people expect. Is that everyone's fate? Were the great individualists the products of their friends who wanted a great individualist as a friend?

VLADIMIR: Moron!ESTRAGON: Vermin!VLADIMIR: Abortion!ESTRAGON: Morpion!VLADIMIR: Sewer-rat!ESTRAGON: Curate!VLADIMIR: Cretin!ESTRAGON: (with finality). Crritic!VLADIMIR: Oh!He wilts, vanquished, and turns away.

The other shoppers were too well behaved to stare at the green-headed stoner and the tear-streaked lady zigzagging up the aisles with a chubby bearded guy scurrying behind them picking up the things they dropped.

What do you take me for? That fool Socrates, who upheld the law at the cost of his own death – just to be ironic? I suspect that act was actually the result of his secret embarrassment of his hideous nose.

Somewhere fate laughs in her far-off country, because now I am the human and it is Grace I will lose again and again, immer wieder, always the same, every winter, losing more of her each year, unless I find a cure.

That Jim Crow there in the window," answered the urchin, holding out a cent, and pointing to the gingerbread figure that had attracted his notice, as he loitered along to school; "the one that has not a broken foot.

Why should I struggle through hundreds of pages of fabrication to reach half a dozen very little truths?''For fun?''Fun!' He pounced on the word. 'Words are for truth. For facts. Not fiction.