“...the most common cause of death among alpha males was ego.”

“I tried to picture a bunch of guys in blue suits running around a beachside neighborhood, knocking on doors and flashing Fed creds. That should cause a stampede of illegal aliens heading south.”

“Most guys arrived here normal, and they were shocked and sickened by the behavior of the guys who'd been here a while. Then within a few weeks, they'd stop being shocked, and within a few months a lot of them joined the club of the crazies. And most of them, I think, went home and became normal again, though some didn't. But I never once saw anyone here who had gone around the bend ever return to normal while they were still here. It only got worse because in this environment they'd lost any sense of. . . humanity. Or you could be nice and say they'd become desensitized. It was actually more frightening than sickening. A guy who'd sliced off the ear of a VC he'd killed that morning would be joking with the village kids and the old Mama-sans that afternoon and handing out candy. I mean, they weren't evil or psychotic, we were normal, which is was really scared the hell out of me.”

“Basically, all women are nurturers and healers, and all men are mental patients to varying degrees.”

“The problem with doing nothing is that you never know when you're finished.”

“The window on the right featured contemporary bestselling authors like Brad Meltzer, James Patterson, David Baldacci, Nelson DeMille, and others who make more money writing about what I do than I make doing what I do.”

“Panic---a deep abiding, free-floating anxiety, often without any reason or logical basis.”