"For all that she’d had no great expectations for it, sex was turning out to be even more squalid, tawdry, and cynical than she had suspected it would."

"The announcers sounded giddily excited. Their faces flushed, their eyes bright. Natural disasters did that to people, made them feel significant, reassured them that their actions mattered."

"“I trust I have not grown so gullible as to consult a doctor,” the bureaucrat said with dignity. “If I want medical attention, I hall employ the qualified machinery or, in extremis, a human with proper biomedical augmentation. But I will not swill down fermented swamp guzzle at the behest of some quasi-literate, uneducated charlatan.”"

"“Did you experience hallucinations or illusions?” “What’s the difference?” “An illusion is a misreading of actual sensory data, while a hallucination is seeing something that isn’t there.”"

"A magician does not send messages, you know—he orchestrates reality."

"It was a scream straight from the toad buried at the base of the brain, that ancient reptile that wants everything at once, delivered to its feet and set ablaze."

"Indeed, what is magic but impossible science?"

"Hierarchies only work to the benefit of those on the top. If you’re high, you’ll get by. If you’re low, out you go! That’s how it is."

"Time was a flickering gray fire constantly consuming all things, so that what appeared to be motion was actually the oxidation and reduction of possibilities, the collapse of potential matter from grace to nothingness."

"“I am playing a game called Futility,” she said. Are you familiar with it? “How does one win?” “You don’t. You can only postpone losing. I’ve managed to keep this particular game going for years.”"

"Money can always be traced. It leaves a trail of slime behind it wherever it goes."

"“I can’t figure you out.” “You’re not supposed to.”"

"Second chances were so rare in this world to be almost miracles."

"In some ways she was not a very good scientist: impatient with data, too ready to leap to conclusions, apt to judge an idea not by its merits but by its sheer niftiness."

"Still...the greatest adventure of her life was over and done for. She had returned from Never-Never Land, from Middle-earth, from El Dorado. The dragons were slain, the treasures dug up and hauled away in wagons, the swords and bright banners packed in trunks and stowed in the attic. Nothing she ever did would be as vivid and meaningful again."

"He’s just an ambitious young beta male with delusion of alphahood. He wants power and double rations, is all. This whole thing stinks of primate politics."

"It was a terrible blessing she’d been given, to see herself the way everybody else did."

"It was classic cult behavior: the charismatic leader whose word was law, the unreasoning obedience, the pervasive fear."

"She had gone rafting down the Eden. She had faced down the largest animals ever to walk the Earth. She had tended to a dying woman in her final days and nursed an ailing man back to health. She had known tears and laughter, toil, love, sweat, and danger. These were the primal satisfactions, the things that made life matter. What did Washington, D.C., in the twenty-first century have to offer that could compare with them?"

"She was one of those people who discredited their own ideas by the force with which they argued them."

"“It’s inspired lunacy,” Leyster agreed. Chuck looked crestfallen. “Right up there with continental drift, or the notion that birds might be descended from dinosaurs.” Chuck brightened. “But it’s also right up there with Eric Van Danniken and Lamarckian genetics. Until we’ve tested it out, it’s just a nifty hypothesis, no more.”"

"“Your system works fine in theory. But things are different in the real world.” ”I’m going to move to Theory some day,” Chuck said. “Everything works there.”"

"“Okay, so we broke the rules. That’s good! There are no more rules—they’re broken. Anything is possible now. We’ll find a solution. There has to be a solution. There always is.” “Not in my experience.” They were, he realized, standing on opposite sides of the great divide that separates those who deal with scientific fact and those who deal with the consequences of human actions. Which is to say, those who believe in a rational universe and those who know that, given the existence of human beings, there is no such thing. “You and I belong to entirely different universes, did you know that?”"

"“The problem was that when all you’re trying to do is survive, the universe seems a cold and hostile place. We needed a purpose. To distract us from our awareness of being a single spark of human warmth in an infinite expanse of silence. One small candle in the infinite night of being.” “Do you really think science is purpose enough?” “Yes, I do. I always have. Maybe it’s because I was a lonely kid, and there were times that learning things was all that kept me going. The search for truth is not an unworthy reason to keep going.” “You make it sound so arbitrary.” “Maybe it is. Yet I persist in believing that knowledge is better than ignorance.”"

"“A man thinks with his dick,” Jimmy said, embarrassed. “That’s why his friends have to look out for him.”"

"“That’s impossible.” “Only to small minds,” Gertrude said."

"But the way she saw it, you only had so much organization in your life. You had to choose: Invest it in your research, or fritter it away on housework."

"She had learned at an early age that it was not how often you were wrong that counted in science, but how often you were right. One startling hit covered a multitude of bad guesses."

"You have to spell things out for the press—you can’t rely on them to know even the simplest things."

"We did it the way we did it because according to the records, that’s the way we did it. The rules against paradox bind us as tightly as they do you."

"And she was off, leaping like a salmon from idea to idea. Hers was the kind of fast and playful intellect that enjoyed tossing a stone into the pond of received wisdom, just to see the frogs jump."

"Everybody dies. So much of growing up consists of coming to grips with this fact."

"It really is a pity. Esme was so full of curiosity and enthusiasm when she was a child. She’d make a great biologist. But it was her misfortune to be born wealthy. She had dreams. But her parents had too much money to allow that."

"Everything was dying, yet death did not suffice. Life had hidden resources. In a thousand ways it was concentrating strength, hoarding its energies in seed, chrysalis, and nectar, preparing for the warrior sweep out of exile that would undo the defeat of winter. Spring was implicit."

"It pained him to think how naive he had once been."

"He was accustomed to questioning an essentially impassive universe. The physical world might be maddeningly close-lipped about its secrets, but it didn’t lie, and it never actively tried to deceive you."

"The authority of superior knowledge was different in kind from the authority of assumed power. Still, he felt a little awkward assuming it."

"Common sense has very little to do with physics."

"That is the true measure of love, you see, the evil one will stoop to for its sake..."

"“Machines!” Wyeth snorted. “Machines are the easiest things in the universe to outwit because they’re predictable—that’s their function, to be predictable, to do exactly what they’re designed for, time after time."

"It was not possible for her to rejoin the unthinking world, becoming as she had been before, sleepily and smugly ignorant of consequences. There were thoughts that once thought, could not be unthought."

"I’ll have to throw it at him, Rebel thought. Swing it up, catch him under the jaw, break a few teeth. Then grab the knife and hold him for the security people. That was a good plan. It ranked right up there with suddenly learning how to teleport."

"The secret of a good scam is not to get greedy."

"Urban life was thus founded upon the principle of deliberately confounding those who were not a part of it. Civilization was a strategy of exclusion."

"This was human glory—a sad and exhaust-darkened memorial for good citizens to ignore and drunks to piss upon on their way home from the brothels. Here was the omega-point of all ambition."

"I’m a politician. I agree with the majority of whoever I happen to be with at the moment."

"“What you propose to do today is to bring civilization to a lawless corner of the world. I know that you claim more modest ambitions. But when the protection of law is extended to the innocent and weak, that is civilization. Now I hold that in the natural state, there are only two kinds of people in the world—the men with guns, and the victims. And the one kind feeds off the other.”"

"People will believe in just about any kind of superstitious crap nowadays."

"It was the kind of discovery that shatters old universes and opens up new ones in their place."

"Your girlfriend is none too tightly wrapped, if you’ll forgive me for saying so. I don’t think she’s actually crazy, but—I been watching her a long time, and it is my considered opinion that she is none too clear on where the line between fantasy and reality should be drawn."