“The Shy Hunter is terrified that others will destroy the truth within his heart, Rose said, And so the Shy Hunter armours himself ... thus armoured, he watches and waits and studies the world meticulously, hunting the world for prey ... Prey not in the sense of devouring or murder, Rose said, But prey in the sense of hunting for sore truths within another human heart.”

“This is a world of the hunters and the hunted, signorina. Tonight you are the prey and I am the hunter!”

“Life is a mess, Rose said. You can fix the mess human beings make, Rose said, But you can't fix the mess being human is.”

“You know, Rose said, You're not the first man in history who thinks his cock is the path to wisdom. You're not the first man to make his hard-on into the Holy Grail.”

“A person without her or his own truth ain't a person at all, Ida said. Anybody who tells you different—is a jackass, and no longer deserves to be called human being.”

“Successful hunting, it could be said, is an act of terminal empathy: the kill depends on how successfully a hunter inserts himself into the umwelt of his prey--even to the point of disguising himself as that animal and mimicking its behavior.”

“Some people like to bitch, Rose said. Bitching is OK. But for me, I choose a kind of joy -- a lucid compulsion -- a polemical kind of fuck-you-motherfucker joy.”