"My name is Frank Bascombe. I am a sportswriter." Chap. 1, p. 3

"I wrote half of a short novel soon after we moved here from New York and then put it in the drawer, where it has been ever since, and from which I don't expect to retrieve it unless something I cannot now imagine happens." Chap. 1, p. 3

"I hear the bells of St. Leo the Great chime six o'clock, and for some reason I have a feeling I won't see her for a long time, that something is over and something begun, though I cannot tell you for the life of me what those somethings might be." Chap. 1, p. 23

"All we really want is to get to the point where the past can explain nothing about us and we can get on with life. Whose history can ever reveal very much. In my view Americans put too much...