A boy, if he's lucky, discovers his limitations across a leisurely passage of years, with a self-awareness arriving slowly. That way, at least he has plenty of time to heroically imagine himself first. Most boys unfold in this natural, measured way, growing up with at least one adult on the scene who can convincingly fake being all-powerful, omniscient, and unfailingly protective for a kid's first decade or so, providing an invaluable canopy of reachable stars and monsters that are comfortably make-believe.

— Ron Suskind

A lawyer's empathy for her client deepens when she realizes that she has only seen the last couple of phases of his decline. How hard it must his initial adjustment have been to his loss of freedom?

— Ron Suskind

A Pakistani exchange student's maternal American host "managed to summon the transforming question of her culture, built on the revolutionary idea that people are the sovereign, the boss, captains of their own fate. She said, simply, "But what do YOU think?

— Ron Suskind

A sense of messianic purpose makes the national interest almost indistinguishable from the political interests of the president.

— Ron Suskind

Choose your words meticulously and then let them rumble up from some deep furnace of conviction.

— Ron Suskind

Civilizations rise and fall on confidence. America had figured out a way to borrow money to manufacture it.

— Ron Suskind

Confidence is the immaterial residue of material actions. Confidence is the public face of competence.

— Ron Suskind

Disequilibrium is often instigated by the will to power, a sleepless drive in the human personality to control others, to force them to do what one wants, or not to do what one opposes.

— Ron Suskind

For any thinking person, it (perpetual happiness) is untenable. If you're a thinking person, your upbeat sometimes, said sometimes.

— Ron Suskind

He is now judging himself, harshly, by his captors' rules.

— Ron Suskind