“Regarding vengeance and arch-enemies, one must not only be timely but prideful, and pride exacts propriety.”

“Easy as a child breathes a wish at a dandelion...is exactly how hard it would be for me to tear your limbs from their sockets.”

“Yet this wasn’t like sports, let alone sports movies. The roles weren’t fixed, nor the meaning of the scaffolding. It didn’t have to be this way. They might have, for instance, all felt stronger. They might have felt stronger and come together. They might have decided that, rather than now, as they’d been mistaken before: that if their enemies cheered the same damage as they, then they weren’t their enemies after all. They might have concluded their interests were mutual, that some other force, earlier—some other enemy—had confused and divided them, and that all those who cheered were thus allies unmasked.Instead they felt bitter, tricked by each other, last-strawed underdogs, suckers on the mend. Their enmity swelled and they fought even harder.”

“All the word's indeed a page and we must loudly tear it.”

“It is dangerous to exist in the world. To exist is to be threatened. We must live with threats.”

“You only taste your own dignity right before you puke it up.”

“Since bad timing could mean almost anything, it was a certain kind of truth. A low kind.”