unearths some literary gems.
From Lawrence Block:
***
"You know what the saddest words of tongue or pen are."
"'It might have been.' You're witty, but John Greenleaf was Whittier."
"My God, you read poetry and you're a smartass and you can verb like a mink. I can't let you get away altogether."
[The "verb" business is a callback to an earlier conversation, in which someone paraphrases some comprising letters she'd written that said things like "I want to verb your noun."]
***
“So long, L. L. Bean,” I said. “Hello, Victoria’s Secret.”
“Some secret. You know how many of those catalogs they mail out every month?”
***
“Or one of those scoop-necked peasant blouses, the gypsy look. That might work for you.”
She rolled her eyes.
“Or a dirndl,” I went on. “What’s a dirndl, anyway? What does it look like?”
“To me,” she said, “it always looks like a typographical error.”
***
“Well, well, well,” Ray Kirschmann said. “If my eyes was sore I swear you’d be a sight for ’em.”
