“If there is some divine plan that requires my survival and the deaths of all those children in day care, I respectfully decline to participate.”

“Here's one night when I control the chaos. I participate with the doom I can't control. I'm dancing with the inevitable, and I survive....My regular little dress rehearsal...the day I finally meet Death, the two of us will be old, long-lost friends. Me and Death, separated at birth.”

“If I lived by some code, my actions would become predictable. The enemy would take advantage of this and I’d be killed. An honorable death doesn’t exist. Death is death. But it’s funny that survival and revenge require the same thing: no honor codes, no supposed higher principles to aspire to, no mercy”

“I certainly couldn't have survived my childhood without books. All that deprivation and pain--abuse, broken home, a runaway sister, a brother with cancer--the books allowed me to withstand. They sustained me. I read still, prolifically, with great passion, but never like I read in those days: in those days it was life or death.”

“This is the stupidest plan I have ever in my career participated in," Xenophon said."I love stupid plans," said Eugenides.”

“Even for those to whom life and death are equal jests. There are some things that are still held in respect.”