“I had entered Kidneyland. I was officially a patient now. Somehow, I had managed to walk through the door: WELCOME TO THE WORLD OF SICKNESS. We have air-conditioning and HBO.”

“I had thought that words were instruments of precision. Now I know that they devour the world, leaving nothing in its place.”

“Sure, I had been through the DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) program when I was a kid. I had seen Nancy Reagan’s pasty white ass on TV telling me to, “just say no”. But Nancy Regan had never had to worry about paying the rent, or living pay check to pay check, or finding her dad’s rolling papers on the shelf above the coco-puffs. So I guess in Nancy Reagan’s world it was pretty damn easy to adopt retarded slogans like, “just say no”. I wouldn’t know, though. I lived in the real world. I had problems.”

“When I was a kid we had a sandbox. It was a quicksand box. I was an only child...eventually.”

“I put tape on the mirrors in my house so I don't accidentally walk through into another dimension.”

“I don’t have to walk my dog anymore. I walked him all at once.”

“I am sometimes asked, "How do you know there won't be a war tomorrow (or a genocide, or an act of terrorism) that will refute your whole thesis?" The question misses the point of this book. The point is not that we have entered an Age of Aquarius in which every last earthling has been pacified forever. It is that substantial reductions in violence have taken place, and it is important to understand them. Declines in violence are caused by political, economic, and ideological conditions that take hold in particular cultures at particular times. If the conditions reverse, violence could go right back up.”