“And in a land accustomed to so much anguish, Chase tried to be careful with words. His soccer moms began assigningnicknames during the first day of official practice: Difom, Kakas, Kochma, and Mald...”

“I believe a family just isnt complete without skeletons. My dearest momma clean bit off my daddys nose right around the time they divorced.”

“Noriega wound up like a baseball pitcher on top of the bed and hurled the small gun, but was low and outside for a ball. His tight-fitting house dress was bunched up high on his chubby thighs, expo...”

“Bearing witness from the sides of the room, ten or more lepers shouted at the bizarre scene, Diable! Diable! And then chants of some sort, or prayers, followed by more shouts of Diable! They were h...”

“The monkey liked most humans. They left food cans outside their homes for his family to rummage through in the morningsun. Some yelled and threw sticks, but were slow and didnt bite. Humans were mo...”

“Kids never jumped head first from the top ledge. Never. It seemed forever beforeStoney came back to the surface. Most of the white bubbles had already disappeared.”

“If you agree to work for us, half the time you won't know the purpose of your duties . . . and when we do explain, we might not be telling the truth. But that's the real world, folks . . .”

“There's no way out," he announced with satisfaction, "and no amount of wishful dreaming will produce one. The demon won't go back in its bottle, the face-off is for ever, the embrace gets tighter a...”

“This is a war," Lemas replied. "It's graphic and unpleasant because it's fought on a tiny scale, at close range; fought with a wastage of innocent life sometimes, I admit. But it's nothing, nothing...”

“And once you've been to this Center, this Truth, you'll know your way everywhere. You are never lost again.”

“The Queen's Pride was his ship, and he loved her. (That was the way his sentences always went: It is raining today and I love you. My cold is better and I love you. Say hello to Horse and I love yo...”

“What Joab did not and could not know was that it was ego, and the ego of a king is just like the ego of anyone else. It is a social infection, entering each person as a psychological virus that is ...”

“I can't bear literary snobbery.”

“He was intrigued by the power of words, not the literary words that filled the books in the library but the sharp, staccato words that went into the writing of news stories. Words that went for the...”

“They never opened the door which leads to the soul.”