“And what if Britain lost? There would be a financial crisis, unemployment, and destitution. Working-class men would take up Ethel’s father’s cry and say that they had never been allowed to vote for the war. The people’s rage against their rulers would be boundless.”

“This financial crisis in Europe would have left Greece in Ruins, but it’s been that way for 2,000 years.”

“What if a zombie came in,reeking of death and decay? He'd totally go for te Vicious Redhead Soccer Girl sitting right by the door.I could take a zombie. That ruler on the teacher's desk looked like a sharp edge,and how cool would my classmates think I was? Especially if I had Tasey.I sighed,leaning my head back and staring up at the ceiling.It would never work. No ruler would be sharp enough. Besides which,I never bring Tasey to school.And even if I saved everyone in the class,I'd probably still be expelled due to the school's zero tolerance policy on violence.I'd just have to live without the everlasting appreciation and admiration of my classmates.”

“If everyone were allowed to interpret the ambiguous passages for themselves, their conclusions might diverged wildly. People would move apart in as many different directions as there were people, the community would fragment, and the world swallow up the pieces and who was to say the great revelation would not then vanish as if it had never been?”

“It had never occurred to her that God would cry, but of course that was wrong. God would be crying all the time. He would cry and cry and never stop.”

“Commentary would come to life in 1945 amid widespread predictions that mass unemployment would resume as soon as war production ebbed. But it wouldn’t take long after the war to see that the dire prophecies had failed. It became clear that Western democracy was far from finished; American power seemed limitless.”