“Walter from Microsoft catches my eye. Here's a young guy with perfect teeth and clear skin and the kind of job you bother to write the alumni magazine about getting. You know he was too young to fight in any wars, and if his parents weren't divorced, his father was never home, and here he's looking at me with half my face clean shaved and half a leering bruise hidden in the dark. Blood shining on my lips. And maybe Walter's thinking about a meatless, pain-free potluck he went to last weekend or the ozone or the Earth's desperate need to stop cruel product testing on animals, but probably he's not.”

“That Saturday night, a young guy with an angel’s face came to his first fight club, and I tagged him for a fight. I was in a mood to destroy something beautiful . . . Tyler told me later that he'd never seen me destroy something so completely.”

“If you look at old pictures, Irene Casey is so pretty. Not just young, but pretty the way you look when your face goes smooth, the skin around your eyes and lips relaxed, the pretty you only look when you love the person taking the picture.”

“My father never went to college so it was really important I go to college. After college, I called him long distance and said, now what?My dad didn't know.When I got a job and turned twenty-five, long distance, I said, now what? My dad didn't know, so he said, get married.I'm a thirty-year-old boy, and I'm wondering if another woman is really the answer I need.”

“He was the kind of boy any young girl should date while she's still able to recover.”

“The liberator who destroys my property is fighting to save my spirit. The teacher who clears all possessions from my path will set me free.”

“Ten years ago, he was the hard­work­ing salt of the earth. All he want­ed was to go to Heav­en. Sit­ting here to­day, ev­ery­thing that he worked for in the world is lost. All his ex­ter­nal rules and con­trols are gone.”