His thoughts grew confused, and he mistook that quality for complexity. - George Alec Effinger

I looked at myself in the mirror. I looked awful, but I always look awful in the mirror. I keep myself going with the firm belief that my real face is much better looking.

“You shouldn’t be so critical,” said Mike the bartender. “Some people like this kind of thing, you know.”
“The kind of person who gets excited over that, I don’t care about,” said Ernest.

With people, Moore suspected, no matter how noble the intent, a defect was unavoidable, a taint of politics.