“Christopher throws dandelion head after dandelion head into his bag. It's getting heavy now and his fingers are stained from the work but there are still so many left to kill. His biggest mistake is giving them names.”

“Diego considered while he stroked the thick ruff of fur around Finn’s neck. "Fiction isn’t lying. Everyone knows it’s imaginary. It’s not as if the writer’s being dishonest and misleading the reader.""Though it’s still not true.""Well...no, it’s not.""Honest lying." Finn laid his head on Diego’s thigh. "I like that.”

“He probably hadn't written it. I knew that. I certainly hadn't written mine. But after yesterday, his pompous sneer was permanently imprinted on my brain, and I could just picture him sitting at a computer and stringing together sentences like, "His golden tone and tender touch have moved audiences across the continent to tears." I was half-surprised it didn't claim his vibrato could cure cancer.”

“The biggest mistake we could ever make in our lives is to think we work for anybody but ourselves.”

“Power loves not the light of day, nor the attention of curious eyes. In darkness it thrives most...A lord may send his army hither and thither, but the true testing of his power is in those places where his army is not...Has he sent its long fingers far enough through the backstreets and alleys, into the drinking dens and the lending-houses, so that he may gather them unto himself and hold them firm without a single swordsman?”

“There is nothing more potentially hostile than the indigenous ego interpreting the laws of his conqueror upon his own people”

“Lately, when asked, I have tended to say that I'm Mexican. I like the word because it still makes so many people flinch.”