“They were pleased to eat more Nazis, although nervous about too many disappearances being noticed. More troubling, however, was the flavor. Nazis were nearly indigestible. The taste of hate was hard to swallow.”

“Many Germans nowadays say they were not Nazi, and many were not, but they were nearly ALL Party members. It was safer ... and if you were not, you could end up in a ‘camp’ for retraining ... so they mostly all paid ‘lip service’ to the Nazi Party.”

“Many of the Nazis were convicted after the war, but they were not convicted for being 'unreasonable'. They were convicted for being gruesome murderers.”

“And there on the piss-soaked cobbles, his back to the alley and his face to the wall, lay the object of their diplomatic mission: A sleeping drunk. Colt lay out his hand in a flourish. “Mr. Billings, may I introduce to you His Imperial Majesty Joshua Norton the First, Emperor of the United States of America and Protector of Mexico.”

“You showed me how insufficient were all my pretensions to please a woman worthy of being pleased.”

“I was paralyzed with fear. It was unbearable to be among other kids who were just standing around being fine. It was one of the many inconveniences of this paradox I lived with -the more people I was surrounded by, the more frighteningly alone I felt.”

“But it was too early to know: there were always more pages to go, more words to be written, before the story was over.”