“The whole country's going to puke blood when they read it.”

“Explain me to myself, you’ll make me choke on my lunch. Feel sympathy for me, I’ll puke monkey blood on your understated shoes.”

“War is the form nostalgia takes when men are hard-pressed to say something good about their country.”

“Grass: I’ve invested heavily in blood futures. I have a direct line to the trading floor for polyester blood. There’s a heaving mass of men crying out their bids. The blood arrives at the warehouse in the form of double-knit suits. It’s the only kind of suit I wear. When I collapse in the street, paramedics rush me to the hospital, liquefy the suit and inject it in my veins. ”

“When I read obituaries I always note the age of the deceased. Automatically I relate this figure to my own age. Four years to go, I think. Nine more years. Two years and I'm dead. The power of numbers is never more evident than when we use them to speculate on the time of our dying.”

“If serious reading dwindles to near nothingness, it will probably mean that the thing we're talking about when we use the word "identity" has reached an end.”

“History was not a matter of missing minutes on the tape. I did not stand helpless before it. I hewed to the texture of collected knowledge, took faith from the solid and availing stuff of our experience. Even if we believe that history is a workwheel powered by human blood -- read the speeches of Mussolini -- at least we've known the thing together. A single narrative sweep, not ten thousand wisps of disinformation.”