“The words were pulled from her, agonizing, like a disembowelment.”

“Otto would pull the trigger at the slightest provocation and you, Michael, would agonize aver its morality even if your life were threatened. I'm the tiebreaker.”

“This woman always made Freddie feel as if he were being disemboweled by some clumsy amateur.”

“He was always part of her thoughts, and now that he was real, he was inescapably part of her life, but it was as she had told her mother: saying he was part of her or that they were more than friends sounded like love, but it seemed like loss as well. All the words she knew to describe what he was to her were from love stories and love songs, but those were not words anyone truly meant.”

“agonizingly aware of the money in the vicinity and convinced it was theirs for a few words in the right key”

“I looked back towards them, to see if they were watching me, and saw her pulling her arm from his grip. Her eyes were closed and her hair was all over the places and her face was screwed up.”