“There were a few times when Mother Nature hit me with her best shot, but I always managed to land on my feet.”

“When ladies used to come to me in dreams, I said, 'Pretty mother, pretty mother.' But when at last she really came, I shot her.”

“I will keep an eye on Diatribe, with her big talk and heroic gestures, to see with what force she will bring down my Achilles, when hitherto she has never managed to hit a common soldier, not even a Thersites, but she has shot her miserable self to pieces with her own weapons.”

“I've been shot at and missed and shit at and hit. That's a saying out of my childhood and it's come true more than a few times along the way.”

“And the general shot my sister. I could not look at her, but I remember the sound of when she hit the ground. I hear that sound when things hit the ground still. Anything.’ If I could, I would make it so nothing ever hit the ground again.”

“I breathe in. The water will wash my wounds clean. I breathe out. My mother submerged me in water when I was a baby, to give me to God. It has been a long time since I thought about God, but I think about him now. It is only natural. I am glad, suddenly, that I shot Eric in the foot instead of the head.”