“The success of any society must be judged by the life of its worst off. No other calculation will do.”

“Before September 11, the skinny, jittery black guy made security think one thing: drug mule. But after the attacks, security only cared about bombs. So it was the Arab guys, the Puerto Ricans and I...”

“Doubt is the big machine. It grinds up the delusions of women and men.”

“Empathy is what separates human beings from teenage boys.”

“Human beings are no damn good, he said. We are even worse than animals. We like ...He trailed off, cleared his throat, but his voice hardly reached a whisper.We like monsters, he said.”

“We never see other people anyway, only the monsters we make of them.”

“But these weren't the kind of monsters that had tentacles and rotting skin, the kind a seven-year-old might be able to wrap his mind around--they were monsters with human faces, in crisp uniforms, ...”

“You guys know about vampires? You know, vampires have no reflections in a mirror? Theres this idea that monsters dont have reflections in a mirror. And what Ive always thought isnt that monsters d...”