“Fights begin and end with handshakes.”

“My next fight would not be measured in rounds, but throughout a lifetime. It would sustain and fulfill me longer than anything in the cage could. My opponent, my fight, would be against the slipping aspects of American society.”

“In The Land of Poetry and Fighting, Efficiency rules the throne. I try to live here, so I shave my head because hair is dead and dead is inefficient.”

“Fighting and writing’s deepest layers of beauty lie not only in the physical and mental realms of what we know, but also as an incognizable instinct, a realm we will never fully know but will forever feel.”

“Stories do not change, only the lives they live in do.”

“The words he said, too, must be human enough to bleed.”

“Ultimate vulnerability. That’s manly.”