“She had that rare virtue of never existing completely except for that opportune moment”

“I am not an educated man. I never had an opportunity to learn anything except how to fight..”

““A golden age, Londa calls it. She hopes it will return.”
“Golden ages rarely return,” I said “especially if they never existed.””

“She had never acquired in-between shades of character, had not had the opportunity. She had been utterly selfish, and was now selfless, because she had never become a whole person, did not like herself, or know herself. Nor had she ever gained sufficient wisdom to be properly horrified at what she meant to do. She couldn’t think that intensely.”

“A moment or an eternity—did it matter? Life, undefeated, existed and could exist. She smiled, her last smile, to so much that had been possible.”

“The resume was a work of art. It listed jobs she had never held at health clubs that never existed, promotions that had never happened, professional memberships in nonexistent organizations, awards she had never received, and a fake degree. Accompanying it were letters of recommendation she had written herself.”

“There is a sort of camaraderie that rarely exists except between men who have fought the same enemies and know the same women.”

“I'm not myself," she offered, guiltily. She softened around Tik Tok, and when she did she was, for those rare moments, girlish.

He smiled. "You can never say that. You're just a piece of yourself right now that you don't like.”

“She stared at her reflection in the glossed shop windows as if to make sure, moment by moment, that she continued to exist.”

“Do not in any way 'prove the rule,' but on the contrary are completely valid disproofs, even though they are rare, indeed, so long as one single exception is demonstrable.”