“I wait, washed, brushed, fed, like a prize pig. Sometime in the eighties they invented pig balls, for pigs who were being fattened in pens. Pig balls were large colored balls; the pigs rolled them around with their snouts. The pig marketers said this improved their muscle tone; the pigs were curious, they liked having something to think about. I read about that in Introduction to Psychology; that, and the chapter on caged rats who'd give themselves electric shocks for something to do. And the one on the pigeons trained to peck a button that made a grain of corn appear. Three groups of them: the first one got one grain per peck, the second one grain every other peck, the third was random. When the man in charge cut off the grain, the first group gave up quite soon, the second group a little later. The third group never gave up. They'd peck themselves to death, rather than quit. Who knew what worked?I wish I had a pig ball.”

“Well, I think I speak for everyone when I say that 'Alice Faye picked a peck of pepper for the poor, piping pig in the purple poke.' Wait—is that not what we’re talking about here?”

“The Pig Chef was - if you thought about it - one of the more sinister icons of American roadside art. Danny's personal totem. What kind of pig is a butcher? What kind of pig cooks barbeque? A traitor pig, a killer pig, a doomed preterite pig destined for eternal damnation. Danny's Pig Chefs showed the full weight of this knowledge in their mocking eyes and snaggled snouts.”

“I remembered something my first partner had told me. Never wrestle with a pig, Lindsay. You both get dirty. The pig likes it.”

“He comes off a little like Practical Pig in The Three Little Pigs.”

“One of the things I learned firsthand as a child, growing up in Zacatecas, Mexico was... that when you fight with a pig, you both get dirty,but the pig likes it.”