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 … - Richard Yates

And from this distance they all did look like kids - boys and girls from far and wide with their cheap hand luggage and their Army duffel bags, brave entertainers who might travel for years before it occurred to them, or to most of them, that they weren't going anywhere.

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".

One advantage of the very low lighting in this room, he'd decided, was that it could make almost any girl look like a million dollars.