“This is how it works now with the news: the story begins with a moral, then a narrative is fashioned to support it.”

“Eyewitness News' is a clever plot to convince us that all the important events are happening somewhere else, to other people, at the same time we're literally dying in our beds.”

“We're a telephone family, strung out along the wires, sharing our news in loops and daisy chains. We don't meet face-to-face much, and when we do there's a dematerialized feeling, as though only half of our molecules are present.”

“I just wasn't ready for his stories. They'd breed with the others I'd heard and hatch new monsters, because there was no such thing as separation here, not once you'd started listening. Never listen.”

“Men who turn their faith into a business owe all of us a steak dinner now and then.”

“She's everything I wanted when I was young and everything I distrust now that I'm not.”

“Reliving his degradation had struck some spark in him and it was glowing now like a blown-on coal.”