“Of the four wars in my lifetime, none came about because the U.S. was too strong.”

“I had a question. 'Why does the name Pearl Harbor sound so familiar?'The lieutenant colonel's eyes narrowed. 'Pearl Harbor is the most famous U.S. military base in the world,' he said crisply. 'It's the only place on U.S. soil that has been attacked in a wars, since the Revolutionary War.'None of this was ringing a bell, but you already know I'm totally uneducated. Gazzy leaned over to whisper, 'It was a movie with Ben Affleck.'Ah. Now I remembered.”

“A lifetime is not too long to spend in learning about the world.”

“The war against working people should be understood to be a real war…. Specifically in the U.S., which happens to have a highly class-conscious business class…. And they have long seen themselves as fighting a bitter class war, except they don’t want anybody else to know about it.”

“I could not get my fill of looking.There should be a song for women to sing at this moment or a prayer to recite. But perhaps there is none because there are no words strong enough to name that moment.”

“Some people may have thought that this book was too personal, too confessional. But what these people think about me is none of my business. ”