“I’d never had the chance to experiment before, but it seemed that irrational screaming was enough to make most people scram. Whodathunk?”

“The people who influenced me the most were the ones who said I’d never make it. They gave me a thirst for revenge.”

“Human beings act in a great variety of irrational ways, but all of them seem to be capable, if given a fair chance, of making a reasonable choice in the light of available evidence. Democratic institutions can be made to work only if all concerned do their best to impart knowledge and to encourage rationality. But today, in the world's most powerful democracy, the politicians and the propagandists prefer to make nonsense of democratic procedures by appealing almost exclusively to the ignorance and irrationality of the electors.”

“Almost all the people who’ve had the most effect on me I seem to have met by chance, yet looking back it seems as though I couldn’t but have met them.”

“Well, it was most likely too late; there would not be time for me to flagellate myself for every dishonorable deed in that list, nor any chance to make good the harms I’d done. Minor harms, to be sure, in the scheme of things; but large enough to regret.”

“I can hear other things, too. Before you came around, I had no idea a man could make a girl scream like that. Reyes seems very talented.”