From Ghostwritten: a good line only needs one word

Nearly done with this book but have put off posting some of my favorites here until now. Behold.

The radio alarm clock glowed 1:30 A.M. Bad karaoke throbbed through the walls. I was wide awake, straightjacketed by my sweaty sheets.

Medal Man forced the mouth of his gun into my father's mouth. "Bite," he said.

Medal Man looked into my father's eyes. "Harder."

Medal Man uppercutted my father's chin. My father spat out bits of tooth. Medal Man chortled. My father's blood dripped to the floor in flower-splashes. He staggered back into a tub of water, as though he had rehearsed it.

The soldier holding me relaxed his grip as he laughed. I staved in his kneecap with a bottle of oil and sent the lamp in my face flying across the room. Whoever it hit screamed and dropped something that smashed. I ducked and ran for the door. Lord Buddha slipped a brass chopstick into my hand, and opened the door for me as my fingertips touched it, and shut it behind me. There were three men outside--one got a good grip, but I stuck the brass chopstick through the side of his mouth and he let go. The Japanese soldiers followed me up the path, but it was a moonless night, and I knew every rock, curve, bear path, and fox trail. I slipped off the path, and heard them vanish into the distance. 

I didn't want to broach this topic, but..."Tim, I'm not sure to what degree Alfred is altogether..."

"Altogether altogether?"

"You could say."

"He's as nutty as a vegan T-bone. And Roy has definitely been to Disney World once too often. What of it?"

Technology is repeatable miracles. Air travel, for instance. Thirty thousand feet below our hollow winged nail, it's early morning in Russia. A track runs snowy hills and black lakes, drawn with a wonky ruler. 

Me fellow passengers are oblivious to the forces that infuse matter and carry thought. They don't know how our Boeing 747's velocity increases our mass and slows time, while our distance from the Earth's gravitational center has speeded up time, relative to those asleep in the farmhouses we are passing over. None has heard of quantum cognition.