“During the last few hours of the trip, he and Tess had drilled procedures and done a whole lot of worst-case-scenario type war-gaming. He was now as convinced as he'd ever be that she knew what to do and where to go if Godzilla attacked Kazabek...”

“I think the worst time to have a heart attack is during a game of charades...or a game of fake heart attack.”

“Now he knew that any memories he might cherish during the last years of his life would be only fictions from a biography he'd never lived.”

“It is 10 PM now, and Godzilla has been sitting at his desk in front of his laptop for six to seven hours. He has accomplished hardly anything today. Godzilla is drinking a lot of beer. He can not stop smoking cigarettes. His room is blue with cigarette smoke, and Godzilla sits on a chair in there, minimizing and maximizing Mozilla Firefox repeatedly. He is not over his girlfriend's house because she said on the cell phone that she needed time, alone, to think about their relationship. Godzilla worries that he will not be able to take care of himself if they break up.”

“Aiden already knew he should say his last prayers now. Lex was going to kill him. Slowly.***She was going to kill him. Slowly. Lex sat on the sidelines watching the last game of the night. She hated sitting out, but she had to take her turn.”

“He'd imagined peacetime would bring him a sense of belonging. During the war it kept him going, that thought of peace. He'd believed in it like a season he knew it would arrive one day”