“Hold on.” Beckett shot out a hand, shoved Ryder back. “Are you saying Mom and Willy B are . . .”“That’s what I’m saying. And they have been for a couple years now.”“Fuck,” Ryder muttered.“Don’t say fuck when he’s telling us about Mom and Willy B. I don’t want that verb and those names together in my head.”

“Minds me of a story they tell about Willy Feeley when he was a young fella. Willy was bashful, awful bashful. Well, one day he takes a heifer over to Graves' bull. Ever'body was out but Elsie Graves, and Elsie wasn't bashful at all. Willy, he stood there turnin' red an' he couldn't even talk. Elsie says, 'I know what you come for; the bull's out in back a the barn.' Well, they took the heifer out there an' Willy an' Elsie sat on the fence to watch. Purty soon Willy got feelin' purty fly. Elsie looks over an' says, like she don't know, 'What's a matter, Willy?' Willy's so randy, he can't hardly set still. 'By God,' he says, 'by God, I wisht I was a-doin' that!' Elsie says, 'Why not, WIlly? It's your heifer.”

“... what he could or couldn’t say to them. Everything he had to say: I love you, it’s hell, I walk on corpses and breathe death, it’s only a matter of time before I prove a coward, and I don’t want to be a coward, but I don’t understand, either I kill people, or I’m a coward, that’s the choice, someone somewhere set it up and I get no vote, I can’t say, ‘I don’t accept that’ – and I have accepted it, for a year I’ve accepted it, this is the situation but I don’t understand how I got here, how it is just going on and on, and nobody mentions it, and if you don’t like it they think you’re mad, and you get shot, for cowardice, desertion . . . and your own men, your companions, your brothers, have to shoot you . . . and I’m so fucking scared out there every day, every night— and now they’ve made me a fucking officer — What the fuck could he say to any of them? Well, there’ll be none of that swearing for a start.”

“That's wonderful. I do like a man that tells you right out he’s looking out for himself. Don’t we all? I don’t trust a man that says he’s not. And the man that’s telling the truth when he says he’s not I distrust most of all, because he’s and ass and an ass that’s going contrary to the laws of nature.”

“But my stomach starts constricting because I MIGHT HAVE WANTED IT TO BE A DATE. I mean, what is that? Dates lead to commitment and commitment leads to temporary insanity and temporary insanity leads to full on mental illness—picking out china patterns, choosing museums to get married in—and ends with two fucked-in-the head sons and a dad trying to hold it together when he’s just as fucked-in-the-head as they are.So no, I definitely don’t want it to have been a date.”

“I'd been preparing myself to apologize. Forgive and forget, as Mom says. "Fuck you," I said.”