“If an election were held here tomorrow,” Fahd once confided to a colleague, “Bin Baz would beat us without even leaving his house.”

“...but most houses in California were built without roots, leaving us trapped above ground with the light.”

“His were the kind of eyes that held secrets. The kind that lied without flinching. The kind that once you looked into them, it was hard to break away.”

“Love mattered, in the end. A house without love would always fall, maybe not today or tomorrow, but in the end without love nothing could endure.”

“In rare moments of self-doubt, Dexter had once worried that a lack of intellect might hold him back in life, but here was a job where confidence, energy, perhaps even a certain arrogance were all that mattered, all qualities that lay within his grasp.”

“Even without the mushroom cloudstill I would have hatedListenI would have done the same thingseven if there were no deathI will not be held like a drunkardunder the cold tap of factsI refuse the universal alibi”