“Nevertheless, four years later, at the end of August 2004, a Zogby poll discovered the critical fact that 57 percent of the undecided voters in that year's election would rather have a beer with George Bush than with John Kerry. The question was odd enough on its face, but a nation to which it would matter is odder still. Be honest. Consider all the people with whom you've tossed back a beer. How many of them would you trust with nuclear launch codes?”

“If people knew the story of their lives, how many would then elect to live them? ”

“...Subordination of the state to Christian values is precisely what the early Puritans, even those in the tradition of the Mayflower Pilgrims, aimed to do. The First Amendment notwithstanding, large numbers of the American public (especially churchgoing Protestant Christians) have embodied this Puritan way of thinking, viewing America as a "Christan nation." Relatively recent poll data bear out the enduring character of these Puritan convictions. According to a Pew Forum poll held just prior to the 2004 election, over one-half of the public would have reservations voting for a candidate with no religious affiliation (31 percent refusing to vote for a Muslim and 15 percent for a Catholic).”

“On Undecided Voter​s: "To put them in perspective, I think​ of being​ on an airplane.​ The flight attendant comes​ down the aisle​ with her food cart and, eventually,​ parks​ it beside my seat.​ “Can I inter​est you in the chick​en?​” she asks.​ “Or would​ you prefer the platter of shit with bits of broke​n glass​ in it?”To be undecided in this elect​ion is to pause​ for a moment and then ask how the chick​en is cooked.”

“Its funny whenever people who have'nt seen me in years meet up with me again and they are surprised that I'm not as shy and quiet as I was in the past, I credit that to my years of drinking at bars and partys and conversing with people I would never useally talk to, it was then I relized that even without drinking I could still talk to people just as easy. But It is still a little funner with a few beers in me.”

“Faced with the Divine, people took refuge in the banal, as though answering a cosmic multiple-choice question: If you saw a burning bush, would you (a) call 911, (b) get the hot dogs, or (c) recognize God? A vanishingly small number of people would recognize God, Anne had decided years before, and most of them had simply missed a dose of Thorazine.”