Piper’s Reviews > Rules of Civility > Status Update

To emphasize the spirit of cooperation, Anne leaned forward and took another olive off my stack. I put three fingers in my drink, scooped out half the olives, and dumped them in her glass.

In sixty seconds it was going to be the midpoint between the beginning and the end of time.

—You’ve got a . . . lot of books, he said at last. —It’s a sickness. —Are you . . . seeing anyone for it? —I’m afraid it’s untreatable.

The one thing for certain at Belmont was that on Wednesday at 5:00 A.M. there was no place for the common man. This was like the circles of Dante’s Inferno—populated with men of varied sins, but also with the shrewdness and devotion of the damned.

What a wonderful wish, he said, to wish for another.”

“Katey’s the hottest bookworm you’ll ever meet. If you took all the books that she’s read and piled them in a stack, you could climb to the Milky Way.”