"Your countrymen, McCorkle, are seemingly indifferent to what happens in Africa. Most of them don’t care about what happens here, as long as it happens on the next block."

"They were chosen to die because somebody in our government thought that the world would be a better place to live if they weren’t around any more. Perhaps they thought it would make a difference, and maybe the world did get better for them because they received a promotion or a discrete commendation. But it didn’t change things much for the rest of us."

"“I don’t get the Kina story. If she died back at the beginning of the world, how could she be giving us trouble for the last twenty or thirty years?” “It’s religion, dimwit,” Goblin barked. “It don’t got to make sense.”"

"When I first read Junot Díaz’s short story collection Drown I felt seen for the first time."

"Junot Díaz, who is a big science fiction fan."

"I teach his work in my creative writing classes now, to give students a sense of voice and language and just fierce honesty in your writing."

"Writing fearlessly because, as my friend Junot Díaz has said, "a writer is a writer because even when there is no hope, even when nothing you do shows any sign of promise, you keep writing anyway.""

"Motherfuckers will read a book that’s one third elvish, but put two sentences in Spanish and they [white people] think we’re taking over."

"If you think learning salsa is your future, you’re going to be pretty insufferable in salsa classes."

"We live in a patriarchal imaginary where men cannot conceptualise women as fully human. What’s really important is how this shit resides in us, how this just lives in us, man, even if we’re the good guy – it should give a motherfucker pause."

"Our visions of an immigrant community and an immigrant experience are highly moralistic. I feel like our reality is William Gibson meets Toni Morrison, yet the way we’re interpreting the morality of immigrants is Chaucer.”"

"I grew up in a world, [a] very New Jersey, American, Dominican, immigrant, African-American, Latino world. And, you know, I went to school and it was basically the same. I went to college; it was basically the same, where largely I wasn't really encouraged to imagine women as fully human. I was in fact pretty much — by the larger culture, by the local culture, by people around me, by people on TV — encouraged to imagine women as something slightly inferior to men. And so I think that a lot of guys, part of our journey is wrestling with, coming to face, our limited imagina[tion] and growing in a way that allows us not only to imagine women as fully human, but to imagine the things that we do to women — that we often do blithely, without thinking, we just sort of shrug off — as actually deeply troubling and as hurting another human being. And this seems like the simplest thing. A lot of people are like, 'Really, that's like a huge leap of knowledge, of the imagination?' But for a lot of guys, that is."

"This life takes a lot more courage than I ever gave it credit for. When I was growing up around here I was always fantasizing heroic shit without realizing that what was shaping up was going to be the greatest heroic adventure of them all: trying to live and be a decent human being. That shit takes more courage than I ever had."

"“Do you think we could get a tutor for Varth?” “A tutor? Royal! We’re peasants.” “Castes are castes, but there’re ways to get around that. Silver is the best.""

"There were too many secret things going on. And too many perfectly banal, openmouthed evils driven by ambition or fanaticism distracting everyone from the creeping apocalypse."

"Hano may not fulfill your prescription for such a being. So call him Prime Mover or just the force that set time and matter in motion. He must be because we need him to be. And he must be what we need him to be. It is a philosophical argument difficult to grasp for we who live among obdurately hard surfaces and sharp edges that ignore our wishes, but the observer invariably affects the phenomenon. In this context, God—by whatever name—is, and is constrained to be, whatever we believe him to be."

"Mr. Garrett, you appear to be the sort who needs to be cut to believe in swords. I understand that mentality better than you think. Do you comprehend the idea of symbol? You say you accept sorcery. The very root of sorcery is manipulation of symbol in a way that affects referent. And that’s the root of religion, too."

"“I know you priests believe six impossible things every day before breakfast,” I said. “Some of you, anyway. I think most of you are parasites who live off the gullible, the ignorant and the desperate. I don’t think any of you who get ahead believe what you preach. You sure never practice it.”"

"Really? It made a crazy sense. Maybe perfect sense to somebody in the religion business."

"Next thing I knew I wasn’t alone. And the someone with me was very warm, very naked, and very female. And very determined. And I sure don’t have much will power."

"However, proof or lack thereof are unnecessary to the mind that must believe. And that mind becomes doubly narrow and doubly dangerous when it is given what it perceives as proof. Then it can begin to create that in which it believes."

"We Loghyr have never found proof of the existence of any gods. Neither have we disproved their existence, although logic militates against it. They are not necessary to explain anything. Nature does not provide that which is not needed."

"You need understand only that they are more dangerous than anyone you have ever battled, excepting perhaps vampires defending their nest. They do not just believe, they know. Their devil god has spoken to each of them directly and has given each of them a look into a paradise where they will spend eternity. They will do anything because they know there is no penalty to compare with their coming reward. They fear nothing. They are saved and will be born again, and concrete evidence has been given them for this. They need take the word of no one but their god himself."

"When the going gets tough, the smart get going and the stupid keep heading toward trouble."

"“Know what I think? I got started on the wrong foot at the beginning. I’ve been trying to get it to make sense.” Maya looked at me weird. “What the hell are you yapping about?” “I’m trying to make sense of something that isn’t rational. I knew from the beginning that religion was involved. Several religions, maybe. You can try from now until the end of the world and you’re not going to make sense out of that.”"

"People don’t want to be told to do right. They don’t really want to do right. They want to do whatever they want—and whine that it’s not fair, it’s not their fault, when it comes time to pay the piper."

"I’m a guy who doesn’t understand intangible stakes. I know some would argue that I have a set of values I take pretty seriously, but if I can’t eat it or spend it or make it go purr in the night, I don’t know what to do with it. It’s a weakness, a blind spot. Sometimes I forget that there are guys willing to get killed over ideas."

"I had forgotten the first rule: everybody lies about sex, and the client always lies about it."

"She wanted to be crazy. She said when you’re crazy the truth is whatever you want it to be. She wanted what she remembered not to be true."

"“I’ve always suffered from a weakness for female flesh.” “Don’t we all.” He scowled. “That wasn’t a problem when I was younger. If I visited a prostitute and she found me out, she’d laugh. Priests are their best customers. But if I were found out now I could be destroyed.”"

"The pill-brain microdeity whose mission is to mess with my life was on the job."

"The human capacity for mischief is boundless."

"I took nothing at face. Everywhere I turned religion popped up, and that’s a game of masks and deceit and illusions if ever there was one."

"Halfway up I met an old priest. He smiled and nodded benevolently, one of those guys who are what priests are supposed to be, and as a consequence, remain at the foot of the episcopal ladder throughout their lives."

"The only thing that comes easy is trouble."

"I had a thought. That happens. So do lunar eclipses."

"To me wine is just so much spoiled fruit juice."

"I decided she wouldn’t show. What was in it for her? I was pretty sure she was a gal who didn’t take a deep breath without calculating her return on investment. Such a shame; all that beauty wasted."

"The runt seemed awfully reasonable for a supposed raving fanatic. I guess the first talent a priest develops is acting ability."

"Every revelation slashes Belief with a brutal razor. Already some who never questioned have begun to wonder if all religion isn’t just a shell game perpetrated by societies of con men who milk the gullible."

"I didn’t know him. That was all right. There are a lot of people I don’t know, but I wondered if he was one of the ones I wanted to keep on not knowing."

"She wouldn’t have to work to charm the wardrobe off me. She had that something that goes beyond beauty, beyond style—an aura, a presence. She was the kind of woman who leaves eunuchs weeping and priests cursing their vows."

"My favorite sport is female and my favorite food is beer."

"Even when you have your mind made up, you can’t stay blind to reality forever."

"His big crime was stupidity compounded by godlessness."

"I’m tempted to invoke penalties on the lot and let the gods distinguish between the wicked and the merely incompetent."

"Often all we need to be civil with one another is the presence of a referee we don’t want thinking us fools."

"I started to express my incredulity, but it struck me that I might learn a little more a lot faster with my mouth shut. I admit I don’t often have these epiphanies."

"“I know what I’m doing.” You usually think you do. Occasionally you are correct."

"“You’re a cynical and suspicious character, Garrett.” “It’s people like you who make me that way.”"