The only person who had ever really interrogated her was her husband, and that was because love is a constant interrogation.

Bizden bir şey saklayabileceğini sanıyorsan çok aptallık etmiş olursun. Biz şimdiden her şeyi biliyoruz, ona göre konuş. Önemli olan, bizim bilmemiz değil, senin bilmendir. Sorula sorula öğreneceksin. Ve ne kadar basit olduğunu sonunda göreceksin.

Left alone in an interrogation room, some men will look as though they're well into their last ten seconds before throwing up. And they'll look that way for hours. They sweat like they just climbed out of the swimming pool. They eat and swallow air. I mean these guys are really going through it. You come and tip a light in their face. And they're bugeyed - the orbs both big and red, and faceted also. Little raised soft-cornered squares, wired with rust. These are the innocent.

Your grandmother was not teaching me how to behave in class. She was teaching me how to ruthlessly interrogate the subject that elicited the most sympathy and rationalizing--myself.

You know how when a detective is interrogating a suspect and she already knows they're guilty but she still needs to hear them confess just to solidify the conviction and save a lot of time and heartache? Well it's the same with God. He already knows you've sinned, but he still needs to hear you confess. So save yourself some heartache, my fair young pupil, and confess outwardly!

Without boring you with the specifics, I will tell you that it is an experimental ‘truth-serum’ formula, many times more powerful than sodium pentothal or SP-17; with properties in common with LSD, which is enjoyed recreationally by many in your country’s ‘counter-culture’. I’m afraid this formula will be decidedly unpleasant. SP-17 had the unfortunate side-effect of leaving the subject somewhat sane afterward. This, which we call ‘Veritas X’, will most likely lead to permanent madness…

Given that interrogations had ceased to be an attempt to get at the truth, for the interrogators in difficult cases they became a mere exercise of their duties as executioners and in easy cases simply a pastime and a basis for receiving a salary.

The worst of all was to be faced with the interrogation technique of Thirty Seconds. The interrogator would say something and you had to respond quickly, without once repeating yourself or using the personal pronoun. Very few dissidents could last the full thirty seconds, and a refusal to comply was taken as equal proof of dissidence.

Sometimes when you push someone, you find out who that person really is.

There are scores of people who have never recovered, or been recovered, from an FSB interrogation.They’re a hard organization to describe because nothing like the FSB exists in the USA. To get even remotely close, you’d have to ask the CIA to birth a seven-headed hydra with the faces of the FBI, DEA, NSA, Immigration, Border Patrol, Coast Guard, and the Navy Seals with a hangover and a grudge.