The Clown, pg 184

"They failed to grasp that the secret of the terror lay in the little things. To regret big things is child's play: political errors, adultery, murder, anti-Semitism--but who forgives, who understands the little things?

-Heinrich Boll, The Clown, pg 184

The Clown, pg 107

"There's nothing more depressing for people than a clown they feel sorry for. It's like a waiter coming up in a wheelchair to bring you your beer."

-Heinrich Boll, The Clown, pg 107

The Clown, pg 105

"An artist is like a woman who can do nothing but love, and who succumbs to every stray male jackass. The easiest people to exploit are artists and women, and every manager is from one to ninety-nine per cent a pimp."

-Heinrich Boll, The Clown, pg 105

The Salmon of Doubt, pg 45

" Every country is like a particular type of person. America is like a belligerent adolescent boy, Canada is like an intelligent thirty-five-year-old woman. Australia is like Jack Nicholson. It comes right up to you and laughs very hard in your face in a highly threatening and engaging manner."

--Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt, pg 45

The Clown, pg 47

"Even the devil's eyes can't be as sharp as the neighbors'."

--Heinrich Boll, The Clown, pg 47

The Clown, pg 29

"For the outsider--and everyone in this world is an outsider in relation to everyone else--something always seems worse or better than it does for the one directly concerned, whether that something is good luck or bad luck, an unhappy love affair or an 'artistic decline'."

--Heinrich Boll, The Clown, pg 29

The Commitments, pg 9

"-The Irish are the niggers of Europe, lads.
They nearly gasped: it was so true."

--Roddy Doyle, The Commitments, pg 9