“God answered prayers first by teaching the need to ask, second by using friends as holy messengers.”

“Alex had cooked, and coaxed, and helped Mark form borders around the shapeless days. Alex had given meaning to the word "servant".”

“For the Arab, the past does not merely live. The past defines the present.”

“Mark felt eyes on him as tight as a sniper's aim.”

“Normal Iraqi etiquette was forgotten the moment drivers sat behind the wheel.”

“His eyes touched lightly, and passed on.”

“A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment.”

“I've always said that idleness dulls the spirit. We have to keep the brain busy, or at least the hands if we don't have a brain.”

“If your workplace was somehow transplanted into the jungle and everyone was forced to survive at a very primitive level, it's safe to say that eventually your boss would rape you.”

“We look before and after,And pine for what is not;Our sincerest laughterWith some pain is fraught;Our sweetest songs are those that tell Of saddest thought.”

“I know why we laugh. We laugh because it hurts, and it's the only thing to make it stop hurting.”

“MARCUS ANDRONICUS: Now is a time to storm; why art thou still?TITUS ANDRONICUS: Ha, ha, ha!MARCUS ANDRONICUS: Why dost thou laugh? it fits not with this hour.TITUS ANDRONICUS: Why, I have not anoth...”