Some things come with their own punishments. Like bedrooms with built-in cupboards. They would all learn more about punishments soon. That they came in different sizes. That some were so big they were like cupboards with built-in bedrooms. You could spend your whole life in them, wandering through dark shelving.

… he remained restrained and strangely composed. It was a composure born of extreme provocation. It stemmed from a lucidity that lies beyond rage.

To call someone 'anti-American', indeed, to be anti-American, is not just racist, it's a failure of the imagination.

Margaret Kochamma's tiny, ordered life relinquished itself to this truly baroque bedlam with the quiet gasp of a warm body entering a chilly sea.

Humans are animals of habit.

It is such a supreme folly to believe that nuclear weapons are deadly only if they're used.

When was the last time the United States won a war? You know, it lost in Vietnam. It's lost in Afghanistan. It's lost in Iraq. And it will not be able to contain the situation. It is hemorrhaging. It is now - you know, of course you can continue with drone attacks, and you can continue these targeted killings, but on the ground, a situation is being created which no army - not America, not anybody - can control. And it's just, you know, a combination of such foolishness, such a lack of understanding of culture in the world.