“I don't know. Maybe we're all chaos theorists. Lovers of pattern and predictability, we're scared shitless of explosive change. But we're fascinated by it, too. Drawn to it. Travelers tap their brakes to ogle the mutilation and mangled metal on the side of the interstate, and the traffic backs up for miles. Hijacked planes crash into skyscrapers, breached levees drown a city, and CNN and the networks rush to the scene so that we can all sit in front of our TVs and feast on the footage. Stare, stunned, at the pandemonium--the devils let loose from their cages.”

“We're all in crashing plane, and everybody is fighting over who gets to sit in first class.”

“Where is the line? We're taught to stand up for ourselves; we're taught to stand up for others we care about. But all of a sudden, there's a new line drawn by the law. You sit back, it says, and let us deal with this.”

“Don't you think...doesn't it seem sometimes like life is like a plane?...And we're all piloos, you know, of our own planes. When things are going smoothly then we're, like, on autopilot, but sometimes things get a little, well, turbulent and then we have to land the plane on our own..."What about the air traffic control?"...Well, sure. Sometimes the guy is helpful, but maybe he's drunk?...Or maybe there's this big fog so you just put your hands on the controls and look for the runway lights and do your best. On your own.”

“And what's worse,' she went on, 'is that on Sunday we're going to get back onto a plane and go back to our houses and our TVs and our hot tubs and we're going to forget about all this.''No we won't, Laci. We won't forget'She wiped her eyes and glared at me.'Yes, we will. You say we won't, but after we get home we'll feel differently. It won't ever feel like this again”

“But even so, we're not devils, let alone gods. We're human. We're human!”