“We were afraid of so many things: Of our children, who lived in their own world of casually lurid pleasures, zombies and cartoon killers and thuggish music. Of our neighbors, who were buying gold and ammunition and great quantities of freeze-dried food, and who were organizing themselves into angry tribes recognizable to one another by bumper stickers.”

“These children are our future. We were children once. All of us were. Bad bloods are an evolution. They are a mutation, not a disease, and we will all have these special abilities one day. Are we going to kill all of our children then? Are we going to kill our future? Because that is what we are heading towards. A dead future.”

“But our lives were not as they seemed, were they, Sophia? No one's life ever is.”

“People often vented their rage on those who were the victims of their neglect because they were in truth blaming themselves.”

“We have become a Nazi monster in the eyes of the whole world—bullies and bastards who would rather kill than live peacefully. We are not just Whores for power and oil, but killer whores with hate and fear in our hearts.”

“If I were your mother, I would also warn you to beware of buildings that claim to be the houses of God. If heard it said once, jokingly, that on their days off, when they are not actively intervening in human affairs or shoring up the sweetness of the earth, the orishas get together in a little apartment in a poor section of Havana around a very big screen television and laugh themselves silly a the unceasing soap opera that is our lives, all the while puffing on good Cuban cigars and swigging cheap rum. And, darling, whether you imagine one big white distant god or many more particular brown ones who like their little pleasures, I would tell you to get off your butt and out of the house if you want to make contact. If you go to a mausoleum, you'll find dead bodies. Living gods inhabit a living world.”

“She had a heart like a Twinkie, full of oversweet goo, yes, a real junk-food heart.”