“A returned battalion of the National Guard paraded through the streets with open ranks for their dead and then stepped down out of romance forever and sold you things over the counters of local stores.”

“Consider the model of [your] local chain pharmacy, where every addictive processed food sold in the front of the store ensures that you will eventually require everything sold by the pharmacy in back.”

“Churches in the outside world, my brother told me, were just the local stores that sold people lies made up in the distant factories of giant religions.”

“National Record Mart began when Hyman Shapiro and his sons Sam and Howard opened their first music store in 1937. A tiny storefront in downtown Pittsburgh, they called it Jitterbug Records and sold used jukebox records for a dime apiece.”

“There's a dead guy on our floor," Tom pointed out."Yeah, that's Beamer, our neighbor." Vik stepped over Tom's bed, and kicked open a drawer beneath the mattress. He swept down and yanked out a bundle of fabric. "Here's your uniform.""There's a dead Beamer on our floor," Tom said again.”

“The dead boy in his arms hung with his head back and those partly opened eyes beheld nothing at all out of that passing landscape of street or wall or paling sky or the figures of the children who stood blessing themselves in the gray light. This man and his burden passed on forever out of that nameless crossroads and the women stepped once more into the street and the children followed and all continued on to their appointed places which as some believe were chosen long ago even to the beginning of the world.”