“You do know I’m the one person who can shoot you and make it look like justifiable homicide?”

“HOMICIDE, n. The slaying of one human being by another. There arefour kinds of homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, andpraiseworthy, but it makes no great difference to the person slainwhether he fell by one kind or another -- the classification is foradvantage of the lawyers.”

“But you can’t make war personal,” I say, “or you’ll never make the right decisions.”“And if you didn’t make personal decisions, you wouldn’t be a person. All war is personal somehow, isn’t it? For somebody? Except it’s usually hate.”“Lee—”“I’m just saying how lucky he is to have someone love him so much they’d take on the whole world.” His Noise is uncomfortable, wondering what I’m looking like, how I’m responding. “That’s all I’m saying.”“He’d do it for me,” I say quietly.I’d do it for you too, Lee’s Noise says.And I know he would.But those people who die because we do it, don’t they have people who’d kill for them?So who’s right?”

“When you carry a gun, everything starts looking like a sword. If you pass the butter too quickly, I’m likely to shoot you. But even if you attack me, we can still be lovers.”

“The person you are when no one's looking, or when no one else knows who you are...that's the person you really are!”

“John Updike, in that book you gave me, he said the dead make space. Do you know what I think? Updike doesn't know dick about what it's like to be a homicide cop in Baltimore.”