"This is a man who lived in a hut made of U.S. Army ration tins and now he is here, in American light, come to lead them to the end of human history."
p. 6

"[M]any people in the grandstand are taking pictures, standing in the aisles and crowding the rails, whole families snapping anxiously, trying to shape a response or organize a memory, trying to neutralize the event, drain it of eeriness and power."
p. 6

"It knocks him back in awe, the loss of scale and intimacy, the way love and sex are multiplied out, the numbers and shaped crowd ... it is like a toy with thirteen thousand parts, just tootling along, an innocent and menacing thing."
p. 7

"When the Old God leaves the world, what happens to all the unexpended faith ... they follow the man because he gives them what they need. He answers their...