“...if Clinton's answers come off as well-intended lectures, Obama is offering soaring sermons and generational opportunity. In 1960, the articulate Adlai Stevenson compared his own oratory unfavorably with John F. Kennedy's. "Do you remember," Stevenson said, "that in classical times when Cicero had finished speaking, the people said, 'How well he spoke,' but when Demosthenes had finished speaking, the people said, 'Let us march.' " At this hour, Obama is the Democrats' Demosthenes.”

“Religious people should always be wary of the ways in which political power is wielded and skeptical of how economic privileges are distributed. They should also be mindful of how their own traditions have been used for narrow political purposes, and how some religious figures have manipulated the faith to aggrandize their own power. The doctrine of original sin and the idea of a fallen side of human nature apply to people who are religious no less than those who are not.”

“At the heart of my argument is the view that religious faith, far from being inevitably on the side of the status quo, should on principle hold this world to higher standards.”

“So, what if everything in life is an illusion? Well, choose your illusion; Don't let it choose you.”

“He was wise in the ways of pain. He had to be, for he felt none.When the Xenons put electrodes to his testicles, he was vastly entertained by the pretty lights.When the Ylls fed firewasps into his nostrils and other body orifices the resultant rainbows pleased him. And when later they regressed to simple disjointments and eviscerations, he noted with interest the deepening orchid hues that stood for irreversible harm."This time?" he asked the boditech when his scouter had torn him from the Ylls."No," said the boditech."When?"There was no answer."You're a girl in there, aren't you? A human girl?""Well, yes and no," said the boditech. "Sleep now."He had no choice. - 'Painwise”

“Obama has said his opponents were trying to 'scare and mislead the American people,' when in fact his opponents are the American people whom he is trying to scare and mislead.”

“It is not the job of writers to life our spirits. Books simply do what they do. They sometimes confirm the capricious drama of a childhood living room. When you think that you are in the grace of a dance you come upon something hard.”