“It is a Bush administration official on the moment when torture breaks a victim:The job of the interrogator is to safely help the terrorist do his duty to Allah, so he then feels liberated to speak freely.From Neil Gaiman's account of a torturer in hell:We will hurt you. And we are not sorry. But we do not do it to punish you. We do it to redeem you. Because afterward, you'll be a better person ... and because we love you. One day you'll thank us for it.War is peace. Torture is freedom. In the end, you love Big Brother. ”

“Bush has legitimized a huge expansion of the welfare state, liberalizing immigration, and using force for democratization abroad. All the next Democratic president has to do to finish Bush's hard work is to raise taxes to pay for it all.”

“It marks a big step in your development when you come to realize that other people can help you do a better job than you could do alone.”

“I don’t fit into any demographic, I never really have. But that’s true of lots of us, especially people my age and younger who’ve grown up with complicated identities, because life has gotten more complicated, and in which we don’t want to be defined by any single one of them, but are happy to present many facets of our interests and personalities.”

“[T]he pied beauty of humanity should not be carved into acceptable and unacceptable based on things that simply make us who we are.”

“You’ll do,” Hemarchidas thought. “Isn’t this what we always end up with? What we truly want is unreachable, so we’ll make do with what is at hand. I know for you it’s different. I know for you it’s really me you want. You won’t regret it. I’ll love you for that, and for who you are. There is still a little part of me that wishes things could have been different. I’ll never let you know, feel, or even suspect that, though. I’ll make sure at least one of us gets what he truly wants.” He noticed Arranulf was studying his face. He gave him a reassuring smile and a light peck on the lips. “It’ll be all right, and I too will be all right.”

“ Monsters remain human beings. In fact, to reduce them to a subhuman level is to exonerate them of their acts of terrorism and mass murder — just as animals are not deemed morally responsible for killing. Insisting on the humanity of terrorists is, in fact, critical to maintaining their profound responsibility for the evil they commit.And, if they are human, then they must necessarily not be treated in an inhuman fashion. You cannot lower the moral baseline of a terrorist to the subhuman without betraying a fundamental value.”