“Life, too, is senseless unless you know who you are, what you want, and which way the wind blows.”
“Smiling without good reason is demeaning.”
“The poor are crazy, the rich just eccentric. - James Shin Hoo”
“I remember the will said, 'May God thy gold refine.' That must be from the Bible."
"Shakespeare," Turtle said. All quotations were either from the Bible or Shakespeare.”
“Your trouble comes from years of wearing the wrong kind of shoes. - Jake Wexler”
“Grace sat down where the chair wasn't.”
“Angela could not be the bomber, not that sweet, pretty thing. Thing? Is that how she regarded that young woman, as a thing? And what had she ever said to her except "I hear you're getting married, Angela" or "How pretty you look, Angela." Had anyone asked her about her ideas, her hopes, her plans? If I had been treated like that I'd have used dynamite, not fireworks; no, I would have just walked out and kept right on going. But Angela was different.”
“Sunset Towers faced east and had no towers.”
“Friday was back to normal, if the actions of suspicious would-be heirs competing for a two-hundred-million-dollar prize could be considered normal.”
“Jake Wexler, standing or sitting when not lying down”
“You can't read my shorthand because I wrote in Polish.”
“The sun sets in the west (just about everyone knows that), but Sunset Towers faced east. Strange!”
“All quotations were either from the Bible or Shakespeare.”
“Can you stand on your legs?” Sydelle Pulaski asked. “Can you walk at all?”
People never asked Chris those questions; they whispered them to his parents behind his back. “N-n-no. Why?”
“What better disguise for a thief or a murderer than a wheelchair, the perfect alibi.”
Chris enjoyed being taken for the criminal type. Now they really were friends.”
“Sandy fidgeted with his pen. “There’s something I didn’t write down. Maybe I shouldn’t tell you, you being a judge and all, but, well, Jake Wexler… he’s a bookie.”
No, he should not have told her. “A small-time operator, I’m sure, Mr. McSouthers,” the judge replied coldly. “It can have no bearing on the matter before us. Sam Westing manipulated people, cheated workers, bribed officials, stole ideas, but Sam Westing never smoked or drank or placed a bet. Give me a bookie any day over such a fine, upstanding, clean-living man.”
“She could have been an interior decorator, a good one, too, if it wasn’t for the pressing demands of so on and so forth.”
“Hey Chris, bet you don't know the Latin name of the red-headed woodpecker."
That was a hard one. Chris had to say Melanerpes erythrocephalus very slowly.”
“You, too, may strike it rich who dares to play the Westing game.”
“The poor are crazy, the rich just eccentric,”
“Hello, Jake, I'm glad you could come," Sunny (as Madame Hoo was now called) said, shaking the hand of the chairman of the State Gambling Commission.
"Boom!" Jake Wexler replied.”
“daughter of the servants.” “Gee, you must have been lonely, Judge, having nobody to play with.” “I played with Sam Westing—chess. Hour after hour I sat staring down at that chessboard. He lectured me, he insulted me, and he won every game.” The judge thought of their last game: She had been so excited about taking his queen, only to have the master checkmate her in the next move. Sam Westing had deliberately sacrificed his queen and she had fallen for it. “Stupid child, you can’t have a brain in that frizzy head to make a move like that.” Those were the last words he ever said to her. The judge continued: “I was sent to boarding school when I was twelve. My parents visited me at school when they could, but I never set foot in the Westing house again, not until two weeks ago.” “Your folks must have really worked hard,” Sandy said. “An education like that costs a fortune.” “Sam Westing paid for my education. He saw that I was accepted into the best schools, probably arranged for my first job, perhaps more, I don’t know.” “That’s the first decent thing I’ve heard about the old man.” “Hardly decent, Mr. McSouthers. It was to Sam Westing’s advantage to have a judge in his debt. Needless to say, I have excused myself from every case remotely connected with”
“HOO JAMES SHIN HOO. Born: James Hoo in Chicago. Age: 50. Added Shin to his name when he went into the restaurant business because it sounded more Chinese. First wife died of cancer five years ago. Married again last year. Has one son: Douglas. SUN LIN HOO. Age: 28. Born in China. Immigrated from Hong Kong two years ago. Gossip: James Hoo married her for her 100-year-old sauce. DOUGLAS HOO (called Doug). Age: 18. High-school track star. Is competing in Saturday’s track meet against college milers. Westing connection: Hoo sued Sara Westing over the invention of the disposable paper diaper. Case never came to court (Westing disappeared). Settled with the company last year for $25,000. Thinks he was cheated. Latest invention: paper innersoles.”
“TURTLE SPENT THE night at the bedside of eighty-five-year-old Julian R. Eastman. T. R. Wexler had a master’s degree in business administration, an advanced degree in corporate law, and had served two years as legal counsel to the Westing Paper Products Corporation. She had made one million dollars in the stock market, lost it all, then made five million more.”
“Read it out loud, dear,” Grace ordered, as Angela opened the card tied to the yellow-ribboned box. To the bride-to-be in the kitchen stuck, An asparagus cooker and lots of luck. from Cookie Barfspringer “Thank you,” Angela said, wondering which one was the Barfspringer. The next gift was an egg poacher. The box in pink ribbons contained another asparagus cooker. “I sure hope Doctor Deere likes asparagus,” someone remarked.”
“Hello, Jake, I’m so glad you could come,” Sunny (as Madame Hoo was now called) said, shaking the hand of the chairman of the State Gambling Commission.”
“Fanatics on both sides,’ old Ryprose said gloomily. ‘And all we poor ordinary folk in the middle. Sometimes I fear they will bring death to us all.”
“Here every bird and fish knew its course. Every tree had its own place upon this earth. Only man had lost his way.”
“Looking back down the vale of the ages at the endless recurrence of their reincarnations, before they were forced to drink their vials of forgetting and all became obscure to them again, they could see no pattern at all to their efforts; if the gods had a plan, or even a set of procedures, if the long train of transmigrations was supposed to add up to anything, if it was not just mindless repetition, time itself nothing but a succession of chaoses, no one could discern it; and the story of their transmigrations, rather than being a narrative without death, as the first experiences of reincarnation perhaps seemed to suggest, had become instead a veritable charnel house. Why read on? Why pick up their book from the far wall where it has been thrown away in disgust and pain, and read on? Why submit to such cruelty, such bad karma, such bad plotting?
The reason is simple: these things happened. They happened countless times, just like this. The oceans are salt with our tears. No one can deny that these things happened.
And so there is no choice in the matter. They cannot escape the wheel of birth and death, not in the experience of it, or in the contemplation of it afterwards; and their anthologist, Old Red Ink himself, must tell their stories honestly, must deal in reality, or else the stories mean nothing. And it is crucial that the stories mean something.”
“Oh yeah. It would be terrible for you to have only one working fang. Your friends might want to call you Lefty”
“The only thing more alarming that what is in that cave will be your punishment if we somehow survive.”
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