“Like a couple of peasants huddled together in the Cathedral of Notre Dame, Jack and Eliza performed their role in the Mass and then departed, leaving no sign that they’d ever been there, save perhaps for an evanescent ripple in the coursing tide of quicksilver.”

“My men think you are dead now, and won’t waste balls on you,” Jack said. “In fact I have let you live, but for one purpose only: so that you can make your way back to Paris and tell them the following: that the deed you are about to witness was done for a woman, whose name I will not say, for she knows who she is; and that it was done by ‘Half-Cocked’ Jack Shaftoe, L’Emmerdeur, the King of the Vagabonds, Ali Zaybak: Quicksilver!”

“Entire sections of them simply cannot be translated - the characters are legible and well-known, but when put together they do not say anything that leaves an imprint on the modern mind.""Like instructions for programming a VCR.”

“Jack the sound barrier. Bring the noise.”

“...in the background she can hear the shopping carts performing their clashy, anal copulations.”

“And so what moved him onward and down the office building’s stairway was not any sort of foolish hope that he could actually be saved, but competitive fury at the fact that he had been outdone by the suicidal improvisations of this fanatic.”

“I'll buy it right now, Jack," said an English voice, somehow familiar, "if you stop being such a fucking tosser, that is.”