“For there either was some Tristero beyond the appearance of the legacy America, or there was just America, and if there was just America then it seemed the only way she could continue, and manage to be at all relevant to it, was as an alien, unfurrowed, assumed full circle into some paranoia.”

“Behind the hieroglyphic streets there would either be a transcendent meaning, or only the earth.... Another mode of meaning behind the obvious, or none. Either Oedipa in the orbiting of a true paranoia, or a real Tristero. For there either was some Tristero beyond the appearance of the legacy of America, or there was just America and if there was just America then it seemed the only wa[y] she could continue, and manage to be at all relevant to it, was as an alien, unfurrowed, assumed full circle into some paranoia.”

“In this springtime of hope, some lights seem eternal; America's is.”

“Street Crime is the only logical response to America's drug policy just as terrorism is the only logical response to America's foreign policy”

“The middle class of America must pay some federal income taxes or this will no longer be America.”

“America was, to them, the place that good people went to when they died. They were prepared to believe just about anything could happen in America.”