“In California, the state's huge dairy herd produces twenty-seven million tons of manure a year, the particulates and vapors from which have helped to make air quality in the argiculturally intensive San Joaquin Valley worse than it is Los Angeles.”

“The sixteen hundred dairies in California’s Central Valley alone produce more waste than a city of twenty-one million people-that’s more than the populations of London, New York, and Chicago combined.”

“That wasn't Josh Hartnett; that kid was eighteen years old," Kate said.I told you, they age slower out here. It's all the fresh California air," Val replied.Yes, because that's exactly what Los Angeles is known for," Kate said dryly. "Clean air.”

“Nowadays a lot of what was wrong with me would no doubt be ascribed to Attention Deficit Disorder, tartrazine food colouring, dairy produce and air pollution. A few hundred years earlier it would have been demons, still the best analogy I think, but not much help when it comes to a cure.”

“Hidden Highlands was maybe a little richer but not that different from many of the other small, wealthy and scared enclaves nestled in the hills and valleys around Los Angeles. Walls and gates, guardhouses and private security forces were the secret ingredients of the so-called melting pot of southern California.”

“People could say a lot of negative things about the apocalypse, but there was no arguing the air quality in Los Angeles had really improved.”