“Oh billions of dollars — is there no dispute you can’t settle?”

“Involvement requires not only being able to give, but also being able to take from others--there must be [a] willingness to give the other [person] the pleasure of giving to you.”

“In the evening [the Iraqi interim governor of Maysan province] asked me for fifty dollars to repair his windows, which had been destroyed in a recent demonstration. Although he was the governor, his salary was only four hundred and fifty dollars a month, and Baghdad had still not agreed to give the governors an independent budget.... For the sake of a tiny sum of money - a couple thousand dollars a month from the hundred billion we had spent on the invasion - we were alienating our key partner and successor. p. 264”

“In order to see, I have to be willing to be seen.”

“Eternity can be found in the minuscule, in the place where earthworms, along with billions of unseen soil-dwelling microorganisms, engage in a complex and little-understood dance with the tangle of plant roots that make up their gardens, their cities.”

“The stars sparkled above the mist shrouded tents and caravans of the carnival. The night crackled with an odd vibration, as if a veil of peculiarity settled over the company.”

“But these few are the salt of the earth; without them, human life would become a stagnant pool. Not only is it they who introduce good things which did not before exist, it is they who keep the life in those which already existed.”