I have thought a great deal, in the quiet since, about the three seconds in that barracks — the three seconds in which I did not scream, not to threaten, not to become the enraged and useless man the Prescotts were counting on.

Everything flowed from those three seconds.

Because the truth about facing powerful, cruel people is that they are almost never defeated by matching their cruelty; they are experts at cruelty, they have far more practice at it than you do, and on that ground they will nearly always win.

They are defeated, instead, by the thing they cannot do and cannot understand: discipline.

Patience.