“What'd you want to talk about?""Just to commend you on your revenge last night. It must have been fiendish. Of course, I can only imagine since there wasn't a mark on Chase this morning, only residual bliss.""He heals fast! I whaled on his face. Must've been thirty hits."Natalya's lips quirked. "You're glowing like a Lite-Brite.""Shut it, fairy.”

“Natalya's lips quirked. "You're glowing like a Lite-Brite.""Shut it, fairy.”

“You probably should have thought about that before you Lite-Brited her ass.”

“You must have been going very fast.""I was, until I hit the fence.”

“When you say ‘old friend,’ are we talking, like...since the Ice Age?”“No. Of course not.”“Oh.”“It’s only been about four hundred years.”“Ah. Yes. Only four hundred.” A wry expression spread over his face. “Being with you is a continual experiment in perspective. Among other things.”

“Can you catch the expression of the Sperm Whale's there? It is the same he died with, only some of the longer wrinkles in the forehead seem now faded away. I think his broad brow to be full of a prairie-like placidity, born of a speculative indifference as to death. But mark the other head's expression. See that amazing lower lip, pressed by accident against the vessel's side, as as firmly to embrace the jaw. Does not this whole head seem to speak of an enormous practical resolution in facing death? This Right Whale I take to have been a Stoic; the Sperm Whale, a Platonian, who might have taken up Spinoza in his latter years.”