“When he picked out the [gravesite] plot, my father had joked that he was moving, at last, to the suburbs.”

“I had a tendency to forget how handsome he was when I was plotting how to peel his skin from the network of muscles and sinew that danced as he moved.”

“[he] had become the bloke in the joke: the last man on earth”

“Humility was a cult in my family. I only got it out of my father by accident when he was very old that he had won an Olympic gold medal.”

“Major Major's father had a good joke about opportunity. "Opportunity only knocks once in this world," he would say. Major Major's father repeated this good joke at every opportunity.”

“I admit to a feeling of pride that my father had saved the day yet again, although I also thought that nothing would have been better for me personally than for the mullah to force my father's departure within the hour. Either way, I know now that nothing would have stopped my father from his Jihad. If he could not remain in Afghanistan, he would go to Pakistan. If Pakistan pulled the welcome mat, he would go to Yemen. If Yemen threw him out, he would journey to the middle of the most hostile desert where he would plot against the West. Violent Jihad was my father's life; nothing else really mattered. Nothing.”