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“How could I help it if the best way was bound to lead to a lot of killing?”
Dashiell Hammett, Red Harvest, Chapter XX. Laudanum [‘You look ghastly.’]

Ry Cooder [Last Man Standing OST 25] — Somewhere In The Desert:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jjf1ugYXLc

“Nothing’s boring if it’s in your soul, the intelligence officer said.” 
David Drake, The Sharp End, Cantilucca: Day Six, 1993.

Samantha plays both ends against the middle to slaughter gangsters at every opportunity.
She alternates team of mages against the warriors & team of warriors against the mages.
Isabela reminds Samantha to find red shard that Sandal might adapt to her personal uses.
Samantha & Varric both touched red lyrium idol & killed sibling; one of them may escape.

Ayria — Plastic Makes Perfect:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TSuldcS4eI

“The first—that is, the earliest—wasn’t so bad, for a love letter. The second was a bit goofier. The third and fourth were swell examples of how silly an ardent and unsuccessful wooer can be, especially if he’s getting on in years.”
Dashiell Hammett, Red Harvest, Chapter XXIII. Mr. Charles Proctor Dawn.

Within Temptation — Stay My Ground:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-AZcaY7JRM&t=152s

“Oedipus was the unhappiest of the heroes and the most vulnerable, but he was also the one who took a step beyond the other heroes. The hero's relationship with the monster is one of contact, skin against skin. Oedipus is the first not to touch the monster. Instead he looks at it and speaks to it. Oedipus kills with words; he tosses mortal words into the air as Medea hurled her magic spells at Talos. After Oedipus's answer, the Sphinx fell into a chasm. Oedipus didn't climb down there to skin it, to get those colorful scales that allured travelers like the rich clothes of some Oriental courtesan. Oedipus is the first to feel he can do without contact with the monster. Of all his crimes, the most serious is the one no one reproaches him with: his not having touched the monster. Oedipus goes blind and becomes a beggar because he doesn't have a Gorgon on his chest to defend him, doesn't have the skin of a wild beast over his shoulders, doesn't have a talisman to clutch in his hand. Words grant him a victory that is too clean, that leaves no spoils. And it is precisely in the spoils that power resides. The word may win where every other weapon fails. But it remains naked and solitary after its victory.”
Roberto Calasso, The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, Ch. X, Knopf, 1993, p. 344-345.