"I thought you said the thing with John was that he was so reluctant to be in any way involved with anything's death that he usually refused to eat, since every eating entails a death. That's not anorexia."

"It is, sort of, if you think about it."

"And that he had a horizontal proof of the indisputability of the proposition that one should never kill, for whatever reason."

"A diagonal proof."

"Diagonal proof."

"I guess."

"He ... want it published, maybe?"

"I doubt he ever wrote it down, since that would involve paper, and so trees, et cetera."

"Quite a fellow. A certain nobility."

"I know I'm more than a little neurotic. I know I'm possessive. I know I'm fussy and vaguely effeminate. Largely without chin, neither tall nor strong, balding badly from the center out, so that I'm forced to wear a ridiculous beret--though of course a very nice beret, too."

"[...] I've been in a men's room with the man. Do you hear? I've been in a men's room with the man."

[...] Just leaving was an anonymous delivery boy, having delivered to Lenore an enormous enclosing wreath of flowers, red-and-white roses arranged in an interlocking Yin and Yang. The wreath sat atop the switchboard wastebasket, being too big to fit inside. Definitely in the wastebasket, though, was the note that had come with the flowers: "Miss Beadsman. Time grows short. One way or the other you will be part of me."