“They were hunters. But now, as night closed in on them, and the swamp became black and hot and close, they were becoming prey.”

“She had never been so close to anybody. It was as if they were one being, together, not predator and prey, but partners in a dance. Poppy-and-James.”

“It never stopped, this running. We were constant prey, and the hunters soon became big blurs: the police, the gangs, the junkies, the dudes on Gaarvey Boulevard who took our money, all smudged into one. Sometimes they were teachers who jumped on us Mexicans as if we were born with a hiduous stain. we were always afraid. Always Running.”

“My eyes were closed, they're open now”

“Pop quizzes were killers. Like ambushing assassins they elicited fear and loathing in the prey, and a certain heady power in the hunter.”

“...of eighteen kittens reared in the company of rodents, only three became rodent-killers later on. The other fifteen could not be trained to kill later by seeing other cats killing. For them the rodents had become 'family' and were no longer 'prey'. Even the three killers would not attack rodents of the same species as the one with which they were reared.”