Richard Yates

After a second or two he thrust the muzzle forward and broke out the pane of glass, less because he knew it would make for a better aim than because it was what gunmen always did behind windows in movies.

Sumbitch wasn't even needed, that's the funny part; just some eager-beaver bastard couldn't mind his own business.

"I still had this idea that there was a whole world of marvelous golden people somewhere, as far ahead of me as the seniors at Rye when I was in sixth grade; people who knew everything instinctively, who made their lives work out the way they wanted without even trying, who never had to make the best of a bad job because it never occurred to them to do anything less than perfectly the first time. Sort of heroic super-people, all of them beautiful and witty and calm and kind, and I always imagined that when I did find them I'd suddenly know that I belonged among them, that I was one of them, that I'd been meant to be one of them all along, and everything in the meantime had been a mistake; and they'd know it too. I'd be like the ugly duckling among the swans."

and for an hour or two they talked in circles.

"You know?" he said. "This is the kind of thing that really—" he paused, examining the wisp of smoke that curled from his wet pipestem. "Really makes you stop and think."

"I expect you'll miss your friends."

"I don't really have any friends; not real ones. Anyway, we'll make new friends."

That had the sound of a good exit line, so she went quickly into her room and slammed the door.

To find order in chaos - why, of course; that was what he'd wanted all his life.

He had been born for this, for finding order in chaos, and all the wasted years has been a mistake.

To find order in chaos; to find order in chaos.

Most people do the best they can.

He seemed decent and kindly enough, but Prentice was cautioned by an old and trusted rule of his schooldays: Beware of the first friendly one; he's probably an outcast himself.

..."a man doesn't spend all these years building something and then kick it to pieces. Don't - well, to put it coarsely, don't shit where you eat."

Late in the afternoon the company cooks brought food up to the village for the first hot meal they'd had since Belgium - salmon patties, dehydrated potatoes, and canned fruit salad - and most of the men seemed in high spirits as they sat or squatted over their mess kits in the street.

"What kind of catshit is this?"

"Salmon-patty catshit, that's what kind."