"Keep a tight asshole" became a favourite motto in times of adversity. - Richard Yates

I expect you'll miss your friends. I don't really have any friends; not real ones. Anyway, we'll make new friends.

Charlie was Charlie: possessed of "an uncannily keen and very articulate insight into other people's weaknesses," as Yates put it. Footnote by Blake Bailey: The quote is taken from the 1972 Ploughshares interview. Yates was explaining how his brother-in-law's personality was similar to that of John Givings in "Revolutionary Road".

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 little I've told you?