"The only place to go now is into the context. If you can find it. Between the context and the content, between the mainline and the hardline, falls the shadow."

“Mindplayers didn't really address a lot about the criminal element of this particular world. Everybody in the Mindplayers world couldn't possibly live like the few people that you saw. A lot of times, a culture almost seems to float on top of its own black market, and things from that filter up through the culture. I get the feeling that this law-abiding peaceful thing that I live in now is almost never-never land - to a certain extent it's not even really real. I spent a decade working for Hallmark cards, which is supposed to epitomise sweetness and light and good living and ethics and morals. But Hallmark, like many American manufacturers, has a lot of things like toys and ornaments manufactured in the Far East, by people in sweat-shops. These are children, old people, poor people, people who don't have enough to eat; we get these things so cheaply because we simply use these people and throw them away. This is what I mean about our culture, our never-never land, floating on top of our underworld.”

“Ninety percent of life was being there, and the rest was being there on time.”

“If you’re really going to die on me, you could at least rub my neck before you go.”

“Keep your best whiskey in a bottle marked ‘mouthwash.’”

“That was it, then, civilization was officially collapsed if the cops had stopped ticketing abandoned cars and roosted on them instead.”

“It was a lonely thing. There was no way to be sure if it meant the same thing to both of you. He’d forgotten that part of making love, how you couldn’t assume that intent was as joined as bodies were.”