Wilbur Muratore

“Again it was like the English he so much admired, those people who could be so subtly rude that you basked in their insults for days before you realized they had mortally wounded you.”
― Mario Puzo, The Sicilian

“What I hope will continue to happen, because it’s already starting to happen. All of us are beginning to do our thing, and we’re going to keep doing it, right out front, and none of us are going to deny what other people are doing.” “Bullshit,” says Jane Burton. This brings Kesey up short for a moment, but he just rolls with it. “That’s Jane,” he says. “And she’s doing her thing. Bullshit. That’s her thing and she’s doing it.” “None of us are going to deny what other people are doing. If saying bullshit is somebody’s thing, then he says bullshit. If somebody is an ass-kicker, then that’s what he’s going to do on this trip, kick asses. He’s going to do it right out front and nobody is going to have anything to get pissed off about. He can just say, ‘I’m sorry I kicked you in the ass, but I’m not sorry I’m an ass-kicker. That’s what I do, I kick people in the ass.’ Everybody is going to be what they are, and whatever they are, there’s not going to be anything to apologize about. What we are, we’re going to wail with on this whole trip.”
― Tom Wolfe, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

“Swamp.”
“Yeah, Hiker?”
“What’s bothering you besides this new case?”
I looked at him. How did he know? My recollections of my days at the naval academy came flooding back.
“Bothering me?”
“Yeah. Don’t make me repeat myself.”
― Behcet Kaya, Uncanny Alliance

“This evening I spied her in the back orchard. I decided to sacrifice one of my better old shirts and carried it out to her. The weather’s been warm of late. Buds on the apple trees are ready to burst. Usually by this time of the year, at that time of day, the back orchard is full of screaming children. Damut’s boys were the only two. They were on the terrace below her, running through the slanted sunlight, chasing each other around tree trunks. She stood above them, like a merlin watching rabbits play.”
― K. Ritz, Sheever's Journal, Diary of a Poison Master