"Paul Slazinger says, incidentally, that the human condition can be summed up in just one word, and this is the word- Embarrassment" (Chapter 2, p. 13).

"Yes, and there were miraculous breakfast foods and would soon be helicopters for every family. There were miraculous new fibers which could be washed in cold water and need no ironing afterwards! Talk about a war well worth fighting" (Chapter 2, p. 19).

"While I was at it, I asked them if they recognized the names of Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, or Terry Kitchen, or Tuman Capote, or Nelson Algren, or Irwin Shaw, or James Jones, all of whom had figured not only in the history of arts and letters but in the history of the Hamptons. They did not. So much for achieving immortality via the arts and letters. (ch. 5, p. 46)

"'You were her audience,' she said. 'Writers will kill for an audience.'...