"At first, when California started winning its water lawsuits and shutting off cities, the displaced people just followed the water—right to California. It took a little while before the bureaucrats realized what was going on, but finally someone with a sharp pencil did the math and realized that taking in people along with their water didn't solve a water shortage."

“She does not know how little anyone cares to separate wheat from chaff, when all anyone wants to do is burn a field.”

“You're saying that you yoked the world to your patented grains and seeds, happily enslaved us all—and now you finally realize that you are dragging us all to hell.”

“Politics is ugly. Never doubt what small men will do for great power.”

“No one had ever come for him... not his mom, not his dad, not his brother, not a dozen people who he'd called his friends back in his town on the coast, not a one of them had ever come looking for him, trying to get him back. They'd just let him go. That was the difference. But this castoff cripple-hand civvy girl had come all the way in. Ocho scowled down at her limp body. See what loyalty gets you? See?”

“An untrampled scorpion troubles no one.”

“If you bargain when they squeeze your balls, they will only squeeze again.”