agonizingly aware of the money in the vicinity and convinced it was theirs for a few words in the right key

“It is not life that's complicated, it's the struggle to guide and control life.”

“One autumn night, five years before, they had been walking down the street when…”

“Very well then, better a sane crook than a mad puritan.”

“I disapproved of him from beginning to end. First he nodded politely, and then …”