"Keeping information from the director of the NRO was like keeping Vatican secrets from the Pope. The standing joke in the intelligence community was that if William Pickering didn't know about it, it hadn't happened." p.15, Ch. 4

"Marjorie Tench had been blessed with all the brains of a supercomputer - and the warmth of one too." p.72, Ch. 17

"The cavernous main chamber of NASA's habisphere would have been a strange sight anywhere on earth, but the fact that it existed on the Arctic ice shelf made it that much more difficult for Rachel Sexton to assimilate." p.86, Ch. 20

"Up ahead he saw the extraction shaft - the point from which the most magnificent fossils in all human history had been taken." p. 145, Ch. 33

"When in doubt just spit it out! The old Yankee proverb embodies one of her mom's basic beliefs - that all challenges can be overcome...