“Who's Johnnie Walker?""It's a drink. For grown-ups.""Is it nice?""Makes you drunk.""What's it like being drunk?" "Like being awake and asleep at the same time.""Sounds nice." "It was meant to sound terrible," he said looking down his glasses at her. "You get sick and stagger around. People actually vomit sometimes.”

“Don’t you find it striking? The personality is constantly dying and it feels like continuity. Meanwhile, we panic about death, which we cannot ever experience. Yet it is this illogical fear that motivates our lives. We gore each other and mutilate ourselves for victory and fame, as if these might swindle mortality and extend us somehow. Then, as death bears down, we agonize over how little we have achieved.”

“Maybe we're all ongoing stories, defined at various stages of life, or whenever people oblige us to declare ourselves. Fiction is marvelous for studying this, allowing the writer and reader to leap decades in a sentence. No other art lets you bend time as much.”

“As touchy as cabaret performers and as stubborn as factory machinists....”

“...looking back, has this journalism experience been a nightmare for you?''Not entirely.''Did you enjoy any of it?''I liked going to the library,' he says. 'I think I prefer books to people -- primary sources scare me.”

“He cannot deny a certain relief in being able to sift through academic tomes, fulfilling his journalistic duty without having to barge past security guards at the Arab League or grab man-on-the-street from women at the market. This library work is easily his favorite part of reporting so far.”

“They had holes to fill on every page and jammed in any vaguely newsworthy string of words provided it didn't include expletives, which they were apparently saving for their own use around the office.”

“Basically, financial reporting is this sinking hole at the centre of journalism. You start by swimming around it until finally, reluctantly, you can't fight the pull anymore and you get sucked down the drain into the biz pages.”

“...which is where I met my my husband. Not currently my husband. My ex. Though he wasn't that then. I never know how to say that.""Allow my copydesk expertise to intervene: your then-pre-husband, later-to-be-post-husband in his prior-to-ex-husband status.”

“literally: This word should be deleted. All too often, actions described as “literally” did not happen at all. As in, “He literally jumped out of his skin.” No, he did not. Though if he literally had, I’d suggest raising the element and proposing the piece for page one. Inserting “literally” willy-nilly reinforces the notion that breathless nitwits lurk within this newsroom. Eliminate on sight—the usage, not the nitwits. The nitwits are to be captured”

“I have to wonder if you're not being slightly naive here. I mean, are you saying that you want nothing for people? You have no motives? Everybody has motives. Name the person, the circumstances, I'll name the motive. Even saints have motives -- to feel like saints, probably. ... But still, the point of any relationship is obtaining something from another person.”