1) ''Sherman resumed his walk toward First Avenue in a state of agitation. It was in the air! It was a wave! Everywhere! Inescapable!...Sex!...There for the taking!...It walked down the street, bold as you please!...It was splashed all over the shops! If you were a young man and halfway alive, what chance did you have?...Technically, he had been unfaithful to his wife. Well, sure...but who could remain monogamous with this, this, this tidal wave of concupiscence rolling across the world? Christ almighty! A Master of the Universe couldn't be a saint, after all...It was unavoidable. For Christ's sake, you can't dodge snowflakes, and this was a blizzard! He had merely been caught at it, that was all, or halfway caught at it. It meant nothing. It had no moral dimension. It was nothing more than getting soaking wet. By the time he reached the cabstand at First and Seventy-ninth, he had just about worked it out in his mind.''
2) ''And in that moment Sherman made the terrible discovery that men make about their fathers sooner or later. For the first time he realized that the man before him was not an aging father but a boy, a boy much like himself, a boy who grew up and had a child of his own and, as best he could, out of a sense of duty and, perhaps, love, adopted a role called Being a Father so that this child would have something mythical and infinitely important: a Protector, who would keep a lid on all the chaotic and catastrophic possibilities of life. And now that boy, that good actor, had grown old and fragile and tired, wearier than ever at the thought of trying to hoise the Protector's armor back onto his shoulders again, now, so far down the line.''
3) '''I got arrested in Montreal last year,' said the Towheaded Tenor with evident satisfaction. 'You probably saw something about that.'
'Well, no...I didn't.'
'You didn't?''
'No---why on earth---what were you arrested for?'
'PEEING ON A TREE!' Haw haw haw haw haw haw haw haw haw haw! 'They don't cotton to it when you pee on their trees at midnight in Montreal, leastways not right outside the hotel!'''
4) '''I'm not the person my wifre married or the father my daughter knows. I'm a different human being. I exist down here now, if you won't be offended by me putting it that way. I'm not an exceptional client of Dershkin, Bellavita, Fishbein & Schlossel. I'm standard issue. Every creature has its habit, and I'm in mine right now. Reade Street and 161st Street and the pens---if I think I'm above it, I'm only kidding myself, and I've stopped kidding myself.'
'Ayyyyy, wait a minute,' said Killian. 'It ain't that bad yet.'
'It's that bad,' said Sherman. 'But I swear to you, I feel better about it now. You know the way they can take a dog, a house pet, like a police dog that's been fed and pampered all its life, and train it to be a vicious watchdog?'
'I've heard of it,' said Killian.
'I've seen it done,' said Quigley. 'I saw it done when I was on the force.'
'Well, then you know the principle,' said Sherman. 'They don't alter that dog's personality with dog biscuits or pills. They chain it up, and they beat it, and they bait it, and they taunt it, and they beat it some more, until it turns and bares its fangs and is ready for the final fight every time it hears a sound.'
'That's true,' said Quigley.
'Well, in that situation dogs are smarter than humans,' said Sherman. 'The dog doesn't cling to the notion that he's a fabulous house pet in some terrific dog show, the way the man does. The dog gets the idea. The dog knows when it's time to turn into an animal and fight.'''
