Mercygraft:

By assessing the tone, form, color and content of his mustaches, his beard: this was one of the only known surefire ways to determine a motherfucker's basic whim, zeal, and veracity; the vital stuff, the core, mean intensity, the trustworthiness of any motherfucker you might happen to chance upon up in the bad streets, the ones where most of the people left still lived, such as they could.

The smooth faced, scaly, empty-eyed motherfuckers were the ones you had watch out for. In them (or with them) they carried something of the snake, the serpent. And I don't have to tell you what that means.

Of course this is all just bullshit, pure and total bullshit. You really had to be a mind reader. If you weren't, you were in trouble. Deep shit.

I knew M before he found his Device. I knew him when he was still just a man. Which in itself was something, given the times.