“Because I was alone, even the mundane seemed charged with meaning....My emotions were similarly amplified: the highs were higher; the periods of despair were deeper and darker.”

“That it would be easy was the whole point.”

“...Both Elizabeth [Smart] and Ruby [Jessop] were fourteen when they were kidnapped, raped and "kept captive by polygamous fanatics." The main difference in the girls' respective ordeals...is that "Elizabeth was brainwashed for nine months," while Ruby had been brainwashed by polygamist fanatics "since birth." Despite the similarity of their plights, Elizabeth's abusers were jailed and charged with sexual assault, aggravated burglary, and aggravated kidnapping, while Ruby... "was returned to her abusers, no real investigation was done, no charges brought against anyone" involved.”

“Jackson was a transformative president in part because he had a transcendent personality; other presidents who followed him were not transformative, and served unremarkably.”

“If everything is amplified, we hear nothing.”

“If we amplify everything, we hear nothing.”

“Neither Emma's tears nor her rage were enough to make Joseph monogamous, however; nor were the prevailing mores of the day. He kept falling rapturously in love with women not his wife. And because that rapture was so wholly consuming, and felt so good, it struck him as impossible that God might possibly frown on such a thing.”