“But this boy in a French or British factory, standing in his leather overall welding the casing on a metal bomb; what can he see? That thing will fly through the air, fall hundreds of miles away, and kill boys in leather overalls in a German factory. the reports will roar victory or defeat, and boys will never know how alike their lives have been.”

“You just read your books and go on a hundred miles away, You ignore me.”

“He was getting that look he gets, oh boy, like Here comes Moses tromping down off of Mount Syanide with ten fresh ways to wreck your life.”

“Back then I was still appalled that God would set down his barefoot boy and girl dollies into an Eden where, presumably, He had just turned loose elephantiasis and microbes that eat the human cornea. Now I understand, God is not just rooting for the dollies.”

“The sting of a fly, the Congolese say, can launch the end of the world. How simply things begin.”

“…praise any word that can hold you. Praise all but the vanishing point where we stand now, not quite parted. Already memories fall like blows. But soon they will be treasure, dropped like gold through a miser’s fingers as he makes his accounts…Praise each insomniac hour, kept wide awake by your glow. Sleep would only have robbed more coins from this vandal hoarded store.”

“Entomologist Dr. Ovid Byron speaking to television journalist, Tina, who says, re: global warming, "Scientists of course are in disagreement about whether this is happening and whether humans have a role."He replies:"The Arctic is genuinely collapsing. Scientists used to call these things the canary in the mine. What they say now is, The canary is dead. We are at the top of Niagara Falls, Tina, in a canoe. There is an image for your viewers. We got here by drifting, but we cannot turn around for a lazy paddle back when you finally stop pissing around. We have arrived at the point of an audible roar. Does it strike you as a good time to debate the existence of the falls?”