I just received an email from the organizer of a conference I'm eager to attend, informing me that my paper has been accepted based on my 250-word abstract.
It's a brief, cheerful note from a man I've never met, and it includes a sentence to this effect: "one of the members of the submissions committee commended your great restraint in not including a reference to '[quotation from the work in question]'!"
Yes: "great restraint!" Exclamation mark!
Translation: "one of the committee members couldn't figure out why the hell you didn't refer to this passage, since it seems way more relevant to your proposed paper than the actual passage you're weirdly putting so much pressure on. Not that he's actually thought about this subject before, but this is the quotation that immediately sprang to his mind when he read your proposal--and he's pretty sure that if you were dealing with the topic seriously you would have worked it into your abstract. But we'll give you a chance anyway."
To which passive aggression I say: THANKS! Capital letters and exclamation mark!