“How, Yusef wondered, can two men joke like that and tomorrow be enemies. Perhaps they’d been enemies yesterday. He decided public servants weren’t human.”

“The eminent strategy had won yesterday,but defeat will be felt by enemy tomorrow.”

“Yet this wasn’t like sports, let alone sports movies. The roles weren’t fixed, nor the meaning of the scaffolding. It didn’t have to be this way. They might have, for instance, all felt stronger. They might have felt stronger and come together. They might have decided that, rather than now, as they’d been mistaken before: that if their enemies cheered the same damage as they, then they weren’t their enemies after all. They might have concluded their interests were mutual, that some other force, earlier—some other enemy—had confused and divided them, and that all those who cheered were thus allies unmasked.Instead they felt bitter, tricked by each other, last-strawed underdogs, suckers on the mend. Their enmity swelled and they fought even harder.”

“Remember, he is not, like you, a pure spirit. Never having been a human (Oh that abominable advantage of the Enemy's) you don't realize how enslaved they are to the pressure of the ordinary.”

“Men think that it is impossible for a human being to love his enemies, for enemies are hardly able to endure the sight of one another. Well, then, shut your eyes--and your enemy looks just like your neighbor.”

“The two enemies of human happiness are pain and boredom.”