Ernest Spoon

“The following morning, Gary and Colby returned once more to Balanced Rock, hoping to dig up evidence of last night's sighting. An argument was taking place in my head: I'd seen diddly to suggest that Bigfoot resided in the Berkshires. What I'd experienced instead was the intoxicating power of belief, a power that's in all of us. At the same time, one need not be kissed before falling in love. Bigfoot may or may not be real, I thought, but either way, there's something profoundly true about the feeling it evinced.”
― John O'Connor

“After a decade of U.S. wars and surging defense budgets, an expectation of special treatment had taken root in the Navy. Many officers felt they were owed something extra for enduring long deployments at sea and missions to support the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. The American people fed such attitudes by placing uniformed personnel on a pedestal, thanking them for their service with discounts and freebies. The further one got from Washington, the easier it became to stretch the norms of acceptable conduct. In Asia, Navy officers pocketed favors they knew would be taboo at home.”
― Craig Whitlock, Fat Leonard: How One Man Bribed, Bilked, and Seduced the U.S. Navy

“One former McKinsey consultant wrote anonymously, ¨To those convinced that a secretive cabal controls the world, the usual suspect are Illuminati, Lizard People, or ´globalists.' They are wrong, naturally. There is no secret society shaping every major decision and determining the direction of human history. There is, however, McKinsey & Company.”
― Walt Bogdanich, When McKinsey Comes to Town

“The Secret Service was still overwhelmingly an agency of cops who preferred long prison sentences for bad guys rather than sentencing reform, who, like Trump, tended to speak dismissively about women, minorities, and immigrants. A large number of the Service’s agents and officers, unlike so many other career civil servants in Washington, were pleased to see the man who spoke their language step onto the White House’s North Portico on Inauguration Day to enter his new home.”
― Carol Leonnig, Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service