Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? Quotes
"I am sitting over coffee and cigarets at my friend Rita’s and I am telling her about it."
"This fat man is the fattest person I have ever seen, though he is neat-appearing and well dressed enough."
"Good evening, I say. May I serve you? I say."
"Don’t worry about it, we don’t mind, he says."
"You’re very kind, he says. This bread is marvelous, he says."
"I like to see a man eat and enjoy himself, I say."
"Do you think it’s warm in here, or is it just me? he says."
"I know now I was after something. But I don’t know what."
"I pour the water in the pot, arrange the cups, the sugar bowl, carton of half and half, and take the tray in to Rudy."
"We talked about it sometimes, mostly in comparison with the lives of their neighbors, Harriet and Jim Stone."
"Bill took a deep breath as he entered the Stones’ apartment."
"I guess I must have been playing with Kitty."
"It’s funny, she said. You know—to go in someone’s place like that."
"I almost got on the phone to the sheriff that night, until I recognized who it was out there."
"I mean it, I said. I’ll see her in the market someday and I’ll tell her to her face."
"What about a bowl of corn flakes with brown sugar? Then he sat down and spread his paper out to the side of his plate."
"I’m going to tell that trash what I think of her, I said and looked at Vern."
"Look at the ass on that. I don’t believe it."
"I think you could lose a few pounds. Don’t get mad."
"Just quit eating, Earl said. For a few days, anyway."
"You’re not hungry? She did not eat much, either."
"I won’t," he said. "Clara. Clara Holt," he said.
"Now—good night, Arnold," she said, and with that she shut the door, almost catching his overcoat.
"I could hear them out in the kitchen. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but they were arguing."
"All right." She shook her head. "I just don’t know. Stay home, then. But no TV, remember that."
"Don’t cook anything. You don’t need to turn the burners on for a thing."
"I keep saying that one of these days I’ll take up fishing," she said. "They say it’s very relaxing. I’m a nervous person."
"I don’t care," I said. "I’m going to wash him off. Which way do you live?" I said.
"What I’m telling you is the gospel truth," he said. "What do kids know? You’ll see."
"I’ll see nothing. If I thought that, I’d rather see them dead first."
"What do you mean, shooting ducks on my land!"
"Word of honor, sir, we never been here before. We just drove by. For godsake," the boy sobbed.
"Maybe so," he said and moved his feet. He knew he would let them go in a minute.
"Every day, every night of our lives, we’re leaving little bits of ourselves, flakes of this and that, behind. Where do they go, these bits and pieces of ourselves? Right through the sheets and into the mattress, that’s where! Pillows, too. It’s all the same."
"It’s my belief a man has to be a little of both these days. I believe, too, in the value of work—the harder the better. A man who isn’t working has got too much time on his hands, too much time to dwell on himself and his problems."
"Rilke lived in one castle after another, all of his adult life. Benefactors."
"I’m convinced that was partly the trouble with the young man who lived here—his not working. But I’d lay that at her doorstep, too. The woman. She encouraged it."
"Beatniks, I guess you’d have called them if you’d seen them."
"A man who isn’t working has got too much time on his hands, too much time to dwell on himself and his problems."
"You never know what'll turn up in this old mail pouch. Wouldn't hurt to be prepared."
"I don’t know why, but I always found myself feeling awkward the few times I was around this woman."
"It’s not the end of the world, Arcata, by any means."
"It was work, day and night, work that gave me oblivion when I was in your shoes and there was a war on where I was."
"There’s a moment as you leave the ground you feel whatever happens is all right."
"I understand Old Man Jessup came out once or twice to get them to turn the water on, but they claimed they couldn’t buy hose."
"When it began to be light outside she got up. She walked to the window. The cloudless sky over the hills was beginning to turn white."
"Not in pictures she had seen nor in any book she had read had she learned a sunrise was so terrible as this."
"I should think a trip to Europe would be very beneficial to a writer."
"Think about the story you’d have if you could get inside that man’s head."
"Talk about honesty," Mrs. Morgan said. "Let’s talk about it," Myers said.
"Any action is better than no action at all, he was becoming convinced."
"You don’t throw everything overboard in a storm."
"She doesn’t have good sense!" was how Al put it.
"I’m not used to being talked to like that by my son."
"You wait’ll we get to Reno. We’re going to have some fun."
"Just one of them things, I guess. You never know."
"It’s nice to have you home, but I hate for something like that to happen."
"I’m glad you didn’t, either. I had a really funny feeling when you left tonight."
"We are having fun, the letter said. We like Grandma. We have a new dog called Mr. Six. He is nice. We love him. Goodbye."
"That's Finch," his dad said admiringly. "He's been in bankruptcy at least twice. Look at that house."
"I had to do without when I was a kid," she says. "These kids are not going to do without," as if he’d been insisting they should.
"We never had books around when I was a kid," she says as she tears open the heavy packages.
"God, what in God's name has gone wrong?" he says.
"Jesus Christ," he says as he stands with the receiver in his hand.
"Everything is all right, we're almost finished, then he's going to bring me home."
"I'm right here!" Leo screams into the receiver.
"Bankrupt!" she screams. She twists loose, grabs and tears his undershirt at the neck. "You son of a bitch," she says, clawing.
"He said he sympathizes," she says. "But he would have said anything."
"He said personally he’d rather be classified a robber or a rapist than a bankrupt."
"We could have had a better table," Wayne said.
"Nothing else to do but gas around with the other waiters," Wayne said.
"Is everything all right? Is there anything wrong?"