"The year I turned ninety, I wanted to give myself the gift of a night of wild love with an adolescent virgin." Chap. 1, p. 3

"I have never gone to bed with a woman I didn't pay, and the few who weren't in the profession I persuaded, by argument or by force, to take money even if they threw it in the trash." Chap. 1, pp. 11-12

"I never had intimate friends, and the few who came close are in New York. By which I mean they're dead, because that's where I suppose condemned souls go in order not to endure the truth of their past lives." Chap. 1, p. 15

"I have a reputation as a miser because no one can imagine I'm as poor as I am if I live where I live, but the truth is that a night like this was far beyond my means." Chap. 1, p. 19

"Whenever...