“The enforcer takes an envelope from his side jacket pocket and drops it in one of the scummy puddles.I look at Predo.“You rehearse that move in advance?He shrugs.“Actually, not. This one has initiative.”

“It’s not that fact of him telling me he’s not going to kill me that assures me I’ve got some time to breathe. Predo could look me in the eye and tell me whiskey’s good and cigarettes are better and I’d still need a drink and a Lucky to believe he’s not lying. The man breeds lies. He spawns them asexually, with no need for any assistance. He exhales and lies fill the air. Alone in a room, he mutters lies to himself to keep from falling into the trap of truth-telling. In the day, sleeping in his bed, deep in the safest heart of Coalition headquarters, he dreams in lies. The better to keep his left hand from knowing what betrayals his right has planned.Stretched on the rack and burned with hot irons, Dexter Predo will be in no danger of revealing the truth. Living so far beyond its borders.”

“He has one of those heads people think about cutting off."“Yes. He does.”

“The man breeds lies. He spawns them asexually, with no need for any assistance. He exhales and lies fill the air. Alone in a room, he mutters lies to himself to keep from falling into the trap of truth-telling. In the day, sleeping in his bed, deep in the safest heart of Coalition headquarters, he dreams in lies. The better to keep his left hand from knowing what betrayals his right has planned.”

“--Tell them to drop their guns and fuck off out of my way.--Allow him to--I clamp my arm tight.--That's not what I said.She gets it right this time.--Drop your guns and fuck off out of his way.They drop their guns and fuck off out of my way.”

“One day, when I am a braver man, I will tell her these things, and then I will look her in the eye tell her I love her and ask her to be only mine. But until that day, we're just friends.”

“Don’t make me come out there and spray you, blanco.I point at my one eye.“Better have some sharpshooter fucking aim you want that shit to do any good.”