It required all his delicate Epicurean education to prevent his doing something about it; he had to repeat over to himself his favorite notions: that the injustice and unhappiness in the world is a constant; that the theory of progress is a delusion; that the poor, never having known happiness, are insensible to misfortune. Like all the rich he could not bring himself to believe that the poor (look at their houses, look at their clothes) could really suffer. Like all the cultivated he believed that only the widely read could be said to know that they were unhappy.

Everyone,_ Caitlin said, cradling her wine glass, __s the hero of his own story. That goes double for fanatics. Some of the greatest horrors in history were perpetrated by people who insisted, all the way to damnation__ door, that they fought on the side of the angels.

It wasn__ Hell; only fools and drama queens throw that word around about a place like Gotham. It was worse, in a way, because it was manmade. There wasn__ any timeless malevolence behind it all, it was just_ what human beings can descend to when they let themselves forget they can be heroes.

All good Heroes are scared, if they know the evil they face.

The great heroes of other ancient cultures were strong and clever and virtuous, but the great Jewish heroes copulated with slaves (Abraham), showed they were willing to allow others to have sex with their wives (also Abraham), cheated their brothers, seduced their in-laws, murdered, started civil wars through terrible family decisions, yet somehow-through a mixture of humility, near-insanity, and good fortune-served as conduits of God's action in the world.

The man with toothache thinks everyone happy whose teeth are sound.The poverty stricken man makes the same mistake about the rich man.