“You take up for your buddies, no matter what they do. When you're a gang, you stick up for the members. If you don't stick up for them, stick together, make like brothers, it isn't a gang anymore. It's a pack. A snarling, distrustful, bickering park like the Socs in their social clubs or the street gangs in New York or the wolves in the timber.”

“Now in those days, my brothers, the teaming up was mostly by fours and fives, these being like auto-teams, for being a comfy number for an auto, and six being the outside limit for gang-size. Sometimes gangs would gang up so as to make like malenky armies for big nightwar, but mostly it was best to roam in these like small numbers.”

“Do you think it's a conspiracy, people secretly ganging up to be nice to you?”

“I know Mark,' I reply. 'And I don't like him.''But I do. And part of being social means being civil to someone you don't like.''That's stupid. It's a huge world. why not just get up and walk away?''Because that's rude,' Jess explains.'I think it's rude to stick a smile on your face and pretend you like talking to someone when in reality you'd rather be sticking bamboo slivers under your fingernails.”

“What?" It was a good word. Like a rock in a river, sticking up to let you land on it, so you could make your way across the flow.”

“When someone loves you up one side and down the other like that, you make every effort to stick around.”