You gotta have references from the hoi polloi or else the MacDonalds won't give you the time of day. You don't happen to know the Queen, do you?

I plummeted down [the ski hill] past the zigzaggers, the students, the experts, through year after year of doubleness and smiles and compromise, into my own past.

Don't tell the person who is receiving the gift that he/she is being regifted.

Pavlov's dogs salivate when [i.e. at any and every time that] they hear a bell.