Apart from opium poppies and hemp plants, kidnappings for ransom had become about the only growth industry in Afghanistan. - Terry Hayes

I had got up in the morning and, by the time I was ready for bed it was a different planet—the world doesn’t change in front of your eyes; it changes behind your back.

The old Nobel Laureate in Virginia had been right when he had asked if the greatest industrial nation in history actually produced goods and machinery anymore. Millions of jobs, along with most of the country’s manufacturing base, had been exported over the decades and a great deal of the nation’s safety disappeared with them.

Like the old virologist had said—sooner or later we all sit down to a banquet of consequences.