“He feelsennuidepressionadrift in his life. Purposeless, perhaps because—dig a well in the Sudan and thejanjaweed come in and shoot the people anyway—buy mosquito nets and the boys you save grow up to—rape women—set up cottage industries in Myanmar and the army—steals them and uses the women as slaves andBen is starting to be afraid that he is starting to share Chon’s opinion of the human speciesthat people are basicallyshit.”

“Smart people sometimes get stupid, but stupid people never get smart. Never. Ever. 'You can come down the evolutionary ladder,' Chon has observed to Ben and O; 'you can't climb up.”

“If you let people believe that you are weak, sooner or later you’re going to have to kill them.”

“In his mind’s eye, though, he sees——Talibanmoving like scorpions across a similar landscape his own caravan blown to shit blood streaming from buddiesNow I’m one of themHe sights in again.No time forLack of PTSDHe only hopes thatGentle BenIncrease-the-Peace Benis one of them, too, now.Now, Ben.Find your inner Taliban.”

“Simon drove as if he knew something about physics that Einstein hadn’t thought of and God never intended. If nature abhorred a vacuum, Simon positively loathed one, and rushed to fill in the tiniest gap in the heavy flow of speeding traffic. He passed on the right, left, center, and all variations in between, and the Keble responded as if involved in some kind of blood compact with its human master.”

“The boys quiet until Ben looks across the table at Chon, holds his thumb and index finger a millimeter apart, and says, “We’re that close to being gay.”They laugh for half an hour.Collective dicks”

“You don’t let them knock you out, you make them knock you out. You make them break their fucking hands knocking you out, you let them know that they’ve been in a fight, you give them something to remember you by every time they look in a mirror.”