Discretion came hard to Lucas, who tended to think slowly and aloud, but it was time to try a little harder. - Robert Stone

What I wonder," Bob Cole said in his strange tremulous voice, "is whether the people down here have to live this way so that we can live the way we do. We have to believe it's no, don't we? We couldn't face up to it otherwise. Because if most of the world lives in this kind of poverty so that we can have our goodies and our extra protein ration - what does that make us?

A little cinder in the wind, Pablo - that's what you are."
"Everybody's worth something," Pablo said. "I mean - everybody's life got some meaning to it. You know - there's a reason for people."
"No kidding? A reason for you? What is it?"
"I don't know," Pablo confessed. "I ain't found out yet. But I know there is one.

In all the working systems, she thought, the weakness was always yourself - that spot of gristle in the gears. It applied on every level - even the act of getting through a day could be performed with gusto and dispatch if you kept out of your own way. Justin believed that she knew as much as anyone about self-struggle.