“If I had a baseball bat and bulldozer, maybe I could stop him. But without real weapons, without a pistol, a man-eating lion, and a vial of bubonic plague, I had zero change of competing against him.”

“But none of them laughed as hard about my beautiful brain as I knew my father would have. I miss him, the drunk bastard. I would always feel closest to the man who had most disappointed me.”

“The streetlight outside my house shines on tonight and I'm watching it like it could give me a vision. James ain't talked ever and he looks at that streetlight like it was a word and maybe like it was a verb. James wanted to streetlight me and make me bright and beautiful so all the moths and bats would circle me like I was the center of the world an held secrets.”

“I had left the tribe, and I was being punished for that.”

“Father Arnold finished the ceremony and asked if anybody had any final words for the dearly departed."Final words?" Chess asked, "I don't know if I'll ever be able to stop talking about this.”

“Is God a man or a woman?God could be an armadillo. I have no idea.”

“She was in pain and I loved her, sort of loved her, I guess, so I kind of had to love her pain, too.”