It runs on the certainty of the powerful that the small will stay silent, and on the well-founded fear of the small that speaking will cost them everything and change nothing.

Every falsified receipt in that division had passed through the hands of someone who knew better and signed anyway, not because they were corrupt but because they were afraid, and the fear was rational.

Cindy broke the machine by doing the one thing it counts on no one doing.

She was twenty-four years old and three months from making rent, and she said no.

I have made a great many decisions in twenty years of business that I am proud of.

Almost none of them cost me what that no cost her.