“I watched the refugee kids swim. They are easy to spot. They are the ones whose mothers stand on the shore watching the horizon instead of their child.”

“The one thought Conan had on the spot about the half hour at 11:35 was that it would likely exacerbate the problem he already had with Leno. 'So at least now, Jay does his show, but there's the break of the news, and that's kind of the reset button,' Conan said to Gaspin and Graboff. 'At 11:35 Jay's going to come out and do twenty jokes. And then what's he going to do?'When they replied that it seemed likely he would have only one guest, Conan said, 'OK. And then I come out and do what?'The NBC guys didn't really have an answer for that other than what Conan had already been doing: his own monologue. That this now seemed like a late-night pileup - three shows with monologues lined up end to end - was the implication no one had really addressed.Finally Conan did have something he really wanted to say, something that had almost burned a hole in his chest. 'What does Jay have on you?' Conan asked, his voice still low, his tone still even. 'What does this guy have on you people? What the hell is it about Jay?”

“Grief produces an abundant energy that must find a way to burn itself up. And that is the fundamental problem, one that can take a lifetime to exhaust.”

“War is always more complex. Economics, history, religion all have a role, but not for the ones dodging the bullets. They just get blown around like seeds in the wind until the city folk with calculators and Swiss bank accounts stop talking rot from a bunker under a mountain.”

“Surely, when looking back, our lives can, for the most part, be accounted for in our interactions with others. That is where memories are stored, in one another. And yet each person is unique enough in his or her own thoughts that no two people are going to remember the same experience in the same way.”

“Someone who spoke English had been listening to his speeches of promised freedom and would have realized they were the drunken lies of men who have titles of power but no authority to exercise it.”

“It was not our war, but it would be our disgrace, our shame. The West was filling to declare a war over the price of oil, but when it came to the wholesale slaughter of human beings we folded our hands across our chests and tapped our heels, with great anticipation that Sunday's sporting events would be wonderfully entertaining”