“Returning his pen to its holder, he told us, 'I will have him gutted with that scythe. I will hang him by his own intestines.' At this piece of dramatic exposition, I could not hep but roll my eyes. A length of intestines would not carry the weight of a child, much less a full grown man.”

“He lost a finger. A finger! Why, I once had a Sherpa who guided me across the Himalayas with his small intestines hanging out of his gut -- in winter!”

“When I was small and would leaf through the Old Testament retold for children and illustrated in engravings by Gustave Dore, I saw the Lord God standing on a cloud. He was an old man with eyes, nose, and a long beard, and I would say to myself that if He had a mouth, He had to eat. And if He ate, He had intestines. But that always gave me a fright, because even though I come from a family that was not particularly religious, I felt the idea of a divine intestine to be sacrilegious. Spontaneously, without any theological training, I, a child, grasped the incompatibility of God and shit... Either/or: either man was created in God's image-- and God has intestines!-- or God lacks intestines and man is not like him... Shit is a more onerous theological problem than is evil. Since God gave man freedom, we can, if need be, accept the idea that He is not responsible for man's crimes. The responsibility for shit, however, rests entirely with Him, the Creator of man.”

“He was so heartrendingly perfect he took my breath away. I wondered how I could have been so lucky to have met him, much less have him sacrifice so much of his time for me. There isn't anything I wouldn't do for him. I think I fell for him the first moment I laid eyes on him, but over the weeks my feelings had grown and grown. I had to admit that I was in love- deeply, endlessly, hopelessly, head over heels in love.”

“He would have been half-hanged, taken down alive, castrated, his genitals stuffed in his mouth, his stomach slit open, and his intestines taken out and burnt, and his carcase chopped into four quarters.”

“You don't like it?" asked Luca, who loves this stuff."I bet Gandhi never ate lamb intestines in his life," I said."He could have.""No, he couldn't have, Luca. Gandhi was a vegetarian.""But vegetarians CAN eat this," Luca insisted. "Because intestines aren't even meat, Liz. They're just shit.”