“I could tell Hugo was convinced that he would get to walk back up these stairs: after all, he was a civilized person. These were all civilized people.Hugo really couldn't imagine that anything irreparable could happen to him, because he was a middle-class white American with a college education, as were all the people on the stairs with us.I had no such conviction. I was not a wholly civilized person.”

“This line of reasoning could have frightened him, but it did not. He gained a certain strength from it. Because, after all, what can be imagined can be achieved.At the head of the stairs, he paused to straighten a mask that had been knocked askew.”

“The Middle East was not a wilderness, and the people there were not savages: if anything they were over civilized. Too many American newcomers to the East saw it in frontier terms.”

“No civilized person ever goes to bed the same day he gets up.”

“I tried to remember what Rita had said about being a bigger person. I could either calmly tell him that he was mistaken or let him have it. I could be the bigger person or I could be like any normal sixteen-year-old.Like there really was a choice."First off, you ever call me a babe again and no medical team on earth will be able to tell that you were once a guy."I was only sixteen after all.”

“Man...is a tame or civilized animal; never the less, he requires proper instruction and a fortunate nature, and then of all animals he becomes the most divine and most civilized; but if he be insufficiently or ill- educated he is the most savage of earthly creatures.”