Oh, Colby said. I see. What d'you see? You really aren't much of a conversationalist, you know that? You 'see', What can you possibly 'see' from what… - Richard Yates

"Okay, kid," Walker said, "This is it." And it was the absurdity of the phrase - nobody said "This is it" except in the movies, unless they were phoney bastards like Loomis - that roused Prentice to his first real anger of the morning. He wanted to smash and break the head of anyone stupid enough to say a thing like that; he wanted to kill all the posturing fraudulence in the world, and it was all here before him in this big, dumb, bobbing face.

Well, marriage is funny, Mike, Harold said once with the wind whipping the vapor of his voice over his shoulder. You can go along for years without ever knowing who you're married to. It's a riddle. You're right, Michael said. It is. Then maybe once in a while you take a look at this girl, this woman, and you think: What's the deal? How come? Why her? Why me? Yeah, I know what you mean, Harold.

From the day of his talkative, overconfident arrival at Irving he had failed and failed at learning how not to behave like a jerk; and everybody knew what kind of life a jerk could expect at prep school.