Devil talk: Top passages from "The Devil in Snakeskins" ... today, No. 8

Continuing our Top 10 sentence tour through the newly released, post-apocalyptic western, here the professor meets Kinsey, the leader of No Man's Land and a future adversary. (With a less-than-subtle nod to the late great Elmore Leonard.)

For the next hour they conversed as enlightened beings in a barbaric world, the professor discussing his love for biology and psychology, in particular Pavlov and Freud, men who attempted to get at why people did what they did, while Kinsey leaned toward the classics, the fables and—winking here—those no-war scribes, that fella from Dee-troit being his all-time favorite, his characters so unvarnished it was like looking straight through to their souls.

Tomorrow, after meeting up at the whorehouse, Madam Hettie can't help but wonder what's going on with the suddenly sentimental gunslinger.

"Snakeskins" available now on Kindle for $1.75.