The Dice Man

The flaw in the book was small but significant: it had nothing to say.

be great is to be misunderstood,’ Elvis Presley

Peerman brought charges

ter Four

Chap

We have a six-room apartment on the slightly upper, slightly East, slightly expensive side, near Central Park, near the blacklands, and near the fashionable upper East Side. Its location is so ambiguous that our friends are still not certain whether to envy us or pity us.

The style is the man,’ once said Richard Nixon and devoted his life to boring his readers.

I shared my office on 57th Street with Dr Jacob Ecstein, young (thirty-three), dynamic (two books published), intelligent (he and I usually agreed), personable (everyone liked him), unattractive (no one loved him), anal (he plays the stock market compulsively), oral (he smokes heavily), non-genital (doesn’t seem to notice women)

Eric playing saint with a glass of water, I remarked to our guest that night, a Mr Houston of Pace Industries, a vice-president, that I almost hoped sometimes that there would be a Third World War because I couldn’t see how else the world would ever be rid of Communism

in an absurd world, one can only go with the flow

Normally nothing upsets a patient more than a late analyst, but Jenkins was a masochist: I could count on him assuming that he deserved it