“The further south the throng went, the more reasons it discovered. Vendettas once sworn for half-forgotten offenses were remembered and invented with each passing blow. Everyone felt like a conduit of justice.”

“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.”

“Gurion would lament: What is the good of trying to do justice if God will kill me and my family whether or not I do justice?”

“Reasonable of you, John. Reasonable of you, Dick. No two Israelites had ever pattered so goyischely.”

“And Desormie dragged the back of his hand back and forth across his mouth twice. And Brodsky coughed fakely to mask his laughter. And there was no more paste in the mouth-corners of Desormie. And Brodsky would not have to stare at paste while they talked in his office. That was nice of me.I went to the gym.”

“Why do we weep once we know that everything will be alright? We weep because the only way everything could ever be alright is in fiction. We weep because what we've seen can't be true, no matter how badly we wish it were. We weep at the truth.”

“I feel like a millionaire on the back of an armored jet-ski my samurai girlfriend who loves me is charging at a cartel speedboat to win a game of chicken. Isn’t this the day’s best part? You don’t even have to remember to enjoy it. It enjoys you into itself.”