“Ordinary parties, he thought, were subtle games of sexual and social badminton...”

“Initiation. What he meant was hazing. [...] Bonding and brotherhood were always the excuses, but more often it was about humiliation and channeling sexual frustrations into perverse games of dominance.”

“The work of the philosophical policeman," replied the man in blue, "is at once bolder and more subtle than that of the ordinary detective. The ordinary detective goes to pot-houses to arrest thieves; we go to artistic tea-parties to detect pessimists. The ordinary detective discovers from a ledger or a diary that a crime has been committed. We discover from a book of sonnets that a crime will be committed. We have to trace the origin of those dreadful thoughts that drive men on at last to intellectual fanaticism and intellectual crime. We were only just in time to prevent the assassination at Hartlepool, and that was entirely due to the fact that our Mr. Wilks (a smart young fellow) thoroughly understood a triolet.”

“He thought each memory recalled must do some violence to its origins. As in a party game. Say the words and pass it on. So be sparing. What you alter in the remembering has yet a reality, known or not.”

“At first he thought she was an ordinary woman. Well, an ordinary dead woman anyways.”

“Oh my God. Party punch. He’d brought a woman with the social age of twelve to the Citadel. He deserved everything he got.”