“Relax now. That’s the beauty of war. Utter subservience to one’s leaders absolves a soldier of the consequences of her actions.”

“Just as they reached the door to the accommodation section, it opened, and a small boy towing a travel bag along the floor behind him came through. A small dog poked his head out of one end of this bag—the pup had been zipped up inside.“Out of the way, son,” Harper said.The child stopped, and gaped up at the battle-archon. Behind him, his trapped pup growled. The rear end of the leather and cloth satchel oscillated wildly. “I wanted to see the angel,” the boy said. “Aunt Edith promised I could watch it kill something.”Hasp halted, still reeling, and looked down at the boy and his pet. “You want to see me kill?” he muttered. “Then order me to do so. You’re all Menoa’s fucking people on this train.”The boy brightened. “Do it!” he said. “Kill something now.”“As you wish.” Hasp kicked the dog with all of the strength he could muster.Had the animal been made of tougher stuff than flesh and bone, or had its bag been composed of something more substantial than woven thread, it might have made an impact hard enough to shatter the glass wall at the end of the corridor sixty feet away. Instead, the creature and the torn remains of its embroidered travel bag spattered against the opposite end of the passage in a series of wet smacks, more like a shower of red rain than anything resembling the corpse of a dog.The boy screamed.Hasp cricked his neck, then shoved the child aside and stomped away, his transparent armour swimming with rainbows.”

“There are things we don't do. From this moment forth, let us all ensure our every action reflects well on us and our ancestors. Let us live to the highest standards, lest we win this war only to find ourselves staring in the mirror at the face of our late enemy.”

“CUSTOMER: Hi, I just wanted to ask: did Anne Frank ever write a sequel?BOOKSELLER: ........CUSTOMER: I really enjoyed her first book.BOOKSELLER: Her diary?CUSTOMER: Yes, the diary.BOOKSELLER: Her diary wasn’t fictional.CUSTOMER: Really?BOOKSELLER: Yes... She really dies at the end – that’s why the diary finishes. She was taken to a concentration camp.CUSTOMER: Oh... that’s terrible.BOOKSELLER: Yes, it was awful -CUSTOMER: I mean, it’s such a shame, you know? She was such a good writer.”

“In her view, there were threeoptions for a woman. If you were beautiful, you got married. If youwere ugly, you became a nun. If you were beautiful and stupid, orugly and dishonorable, you became a whore.”

“She has built her whole life on the foundation of beauty: each chiseled plane, each sloping dimple, each soft curve as crucial as keystones in the cathedral of her body.”

“An Ax was raised into the smoke filled sky while the surrounding soldiers pinned him down and stood on his hands. It took more than a dozen blows to sever each arm just below the elbows. The strangest sensation, he said, was that one minute he could feel his knuckles being ground into the asphalt by the soldier's boot and in the next he watched the man kick his arm away and he felt nothing.”