Several confraternities were established expressly for the purpose of flagellation. Before long, they were competing for members. The Church of Sts. Peter and Paul, having always lain in the shadow of St. Hedwig's, started something called 'Skorupa,' which means 'shell.' The idea was that our bodies are just shells, which are meant to be broken. The name, in avoiding unwieldy constructions involving the word 'confraternity,' was supposed to appeal, in its graphic terseness, to a younger generation, whose members, according to the pastor of Sts. Peter and Paul, were not moved by the more subtle connections between the wine of the Blessed Sacrament and the blood of a righteously scourged flagellant. "You have to make it sound appealing," said the pastor. "That's what the young people need. They need to hear you speaking in their own language. Listen to the word: Skorupa. There's something magical about it. It sounds mysterious, passionate. It captures everything that flagellation means. The word has bite. It's got feeling: a sharp and sudden sting!"

– Verse 431 from the chapter called Adolescence

"It was my husband's fault," she continued. "He let your father do what he did. I never agreed to it. I don't care what principle you cite; life is more important. Money can rot in hell. My daughter didn't need martyrdom; she needed fresh air! That's why we moved here in the first place - not that it helped. Your father took advantage of that. What a louse! My husband, too! He called himself a poet. He was a baker by trade! His words were always half-baked, like his bread. He lied! (God rest his soul.) When I was next to him, I was 'beloved.' When he was gone, selling his bread, it was somebody else who was sweeter than wine, sweeter than roses, sweeter than his own goddamn urine! Lousy diabetic. I was only there to rub his feet, put cream on his puffed-up anus. He went to orgies! Down the street! At his great friend, Trojanowski's house: he was eighty years old! He was hosting orgies!"

"Orgies?"

– Verses 250-251 from the chapter called Adolescence

"Alright," said Jesus, laughing. "If you say so. This is Wine Mountain." They were climbing up a hill.

"Is it named after wine?"

– Verses 428-429 from the chapter called Security

"When we pass by these trees, you'll see the beautiful ridges of Wine Mountain. They've been partially dug into and made very thin. You'll have to watch yourself."

"Why are they so thin?" asked Zoe.

– Verses 454-455 from the chapter called Security

But I doubted it. The newspapers had been full of stories about the general defense-budget crisis for the past several months; the crisis was particularly painful in Silesia, where the provincial government, a raggedy assortment of bureaus without a clearly defined leadership, and which, up till then, had taken no part in military affairs, being told by the national government to start covering its 'own' costs (overburdened as Parliament was by federal requirements to the European Union), and being faced with two new hungry swine, the Silesian Air Squadron and the 2nd Infantry Brigade, decided, according to the generous fashion, to delegate one of its newly endowed responsibilities to a local organ of government, and, since the 2nd Infantry had, as its base, a meager five hundred hectares within the city environs of Wroclaw, the thankless job of maintaining military effectiveness for the 2nd Infantry remained in the hands of its commander, a certain General Stefan Lipski, while the terrible onus of paying for it fell squarely onto the shoulders of Edward Handerek, President of Wroclaw, who claimed he didn't have the money for it either.

– Verse 17 from the chapter called Arms