“And Americans always think international laws are for other people anyway,”

“The entire premise behind the Bush administration's policy of holding 'enemy combatants' in foreign military bases such as Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was so that neither U.S. domestic law nor American obligations under international law would be applicable.”

“If people let other people alone, people would be better off. It's always people that screw things up for people anyway.”

“It is, I think, an indisputable fact that Americans are, as Americans, the most self- conscious people in the world, and the most addicted to the belief that the other nations are in a conspiracy to under-value them.”

“I mean why should somebody go steal and break the law to get all they can when there's always some law where you can be legal and get it all anyway!”

“Knowing that internal stress could cause failure on the exam merely set up internal stress about the prospect of internal stress. There must be some other way to deal with the knowledge of the disastrous consequences fear and stress could bring about. Some answer or trick of the will: the ability not to think about it. What if everyone knew this trick but Claude Sylvanshine? … What if there was something essentially wrong with Claude Sylvanshine that wasn’t wrong with other people?”