“The press conference was held in a courtroom at the new county courthouse, a space that did its best to translate justice into laminated wood.”

“I once defenestrated a guy. The cops got all pissed off at me. I was drunk, but they said that was no excuse.""Ah well," Virgil said. Then, "The guy hurt bad?""Cracked his hip. Landed on a Prius. Really fucked up the Prius, too.""I can tell you, just now is the only time in my life I ever heard 'defenestration' used in a sentence," Virgil said."It's a word you learn after you done it," Morton said. "Yup. The New Prague AmericInn, 2009."Virgil was amazed. "Really? The defenstration of New Prague?”

“The day after the assignation with Barstad, the low stacked-heels of Charlotte Neumann, an ordained Episcopalian priest, author of New Art Modalities: Woman/Sin, Sin/Woman, S/in/ister, which, the week before, had broken through the top-10,000 barrier of the Barnes & Noble on-line bestseller list, and who was, not incidentally, the department chairperson, echoed down the hallway and stopped at his door.”

“Got here half an hour ago and had a look, eyeballin' it," Sawyer said. "It's murder, all right. Tell you something else - the sun went down, and it's as dark as the inside of a horses's ass out here.""You're sure?""Well, I've never actually been inside a horses's ass.”

“DDT stood for Dangerous Darrell Thomas. Thomas had given himself the name when he was riding with a motorcycle club and was interviewed for a public radio magazine. The magazine writer got it wrong, though, and referred to him as TDT--Terrible Darrell Thompson--which lost something of its intent when expressed as initials; and since the writer got the last name wrong, too, Thomas never again trusted the media.”

“Does Raggedy Ann have a cotton crotch?”

“First she got Jesus, probably fifteen years ago, and that didn’t work out, so she tried Scientology, and that didn’t help, but it cost a lot of money, so she tried Buddhism and yoga, and those didn’t work, so she started drinking. I think that helped, because she’s still drinking.”