From The Cat Who Walks Through Walls by Robert A Heinlein

From The Cat Who Walks Through Walls by Robert A Heinlein

“You would kill a man? For bad manners?”
“Do you know of a better reason? Would you have me ignore rude behavior?”
“No but – I can understand executing a man for murder; I'm not opposed to capital punishment....”
“Gwen, perhaps I haven't made myself clear. My purpose is not to punish but to weed... plus the esthetic satisfaction of retaliation for boorish behavior. The unknown killer may have had excellent reasons for killing the person who called himself Schultz...but killing in the presence of people who are eating is offensive as public quarreling by married couples(!)...” (chp II)

[entire conversation to be spoken in tones of ironic melodrama, in jest]
“But, Richard, I married you for your money.”
“You did? Lady, you've been swindled. Do you want to see a lawyer?”
“I suppose so. Is that what they call 'statutory rape'?”
“No, 'statutory rape' is carnal knowledge of a statue... although why anyone should care I have never understood. I don't think it's against the regulations here.” (chp III)

“...Writing is a legal way of avoiding work withough actually stealing and one that doesn't take talent or training.
“But writing is antisocial. It's as solitary as masterbation. Disturb a writing when he is in the thoes of creation and he is likey to turn and bite right to the bone... and not even know that he's doing it. As writer's wives and husbands often learn to their horror.
“And – attend me carefully, Gwen! – there is no way that writers can be tamed and rendered civilized....” (chp III)

I could understand his resentment. How is a sincere criminal, trying hard, going to get ahead in this profession if his victim fails to cooperate? Almost all crime depends on the acquiescence of the victim. If the victim refused his assigned role, the criminal is placed at a disadvantage, one so severe that is usually takes an understanding and compassionate judge to set things right. (chp V)

“Gwen took us straight to the Spaceman's Window, tucked in behind Macy's storerooms just as she had said, in one of those odd little corners formed by the habitat's cylindrical shape...” (chp VIII because my circles have corners in 'em. Don't your's?)

[after a very cheap, used, 1-way rental shuttlecraft crashed on Earth's moon] “There were military surplus rescue suits, still sealing in their original cartons. Each carton was marked with contractor's name (Michelin Tires, S.A.) and date (twenty-nine years ago).
Aside from the fact that the plasticizers would have bled out all plastomers and elastomers – hoses, gaskets, ect. – in the time, and the fact that some roguish japester had neglected to supply air bottles, these pressure suites were just dandy. For a masquerade ball.
Nevertheless I was prepared to trust my life to one of these clown suites for five minutes, or even ten, if the alternative involved exposing my bare face to vacuum.
But if the alternative way merely rassling a grizzly bear, I'd holler, “Bring on your b'ar!” (chp X)

“I tried to dig out of the computer a call directory for Luna. But it was still sulking; I could not get it to list its own directory. So I tried some test problems on it. It insisted that 2+2=3.999999999999999999... When I tried to get it to admit that 4=2+2, it became angry and claimed that 4=3.14259265358979323846264338327950288419716939937511... So I gave up. (chp X)”

While the book was absolutely wonderful in storytelling, the plot does take a giant leap off the deep in of oddity, and reaches a number of concluding events which I found wholly distasteful. I can't recommend this book to anyone in good conscience. It was as though Douglass Adams spent two hundred pages on a carefully detailed mystery story, worthy of Agatha Christie (who I've never read), and then, upon being apparently unable to resolve the plot, decided to blow up the Earth and make way for an interstellar hyperspace bypass.