"It was a lonely thing. There was no way to be sure if it meant the same thing to both of you. He’d forgotten that part of making love, how you couldn’t assume that intent was as joined as bodies were."

"Nothing stays the same, Gina, nothing works forever. If I don’t like it, that’s too bad. If you don’t like it, that’s still too bad."

"The Beater has still been young enough to feel immortal, at least on his better days. It was all, Wow, if we don’t slow down, we’re gonna die before we get old, except somehow it hadn’t happened that way. So they’d all assumed it never would, not dying, not getting old—hell, not even growing up."

"The authenticity may have been dubious, but the excitement had been real."

"Keep your best whiskey in a bottle marked ‘mouthwash.’"

"If you’re really going to die on me, you could at least rub my neck before you go."

"It gets tricky here, but it’s always seemed to be that sanity is, or can be, as relative as anything else. Sacrifice an animal to Zeus and predict the future from the formation of its entrails—do that as a general in ancient Greece hoping for victory in a coming battle and you’re prudent. Do it today and you’re a clinical paranoid and a mean one, too. Sanity, like customs and manners, seems to have a strong basis in the accepted standards of a particular time and place."

"Help him by helping him resist your help."

"Maybe it’s better to be half of something wonderful than a whole nothing at all."

"Some people gain freedom by trading one form of bondage for another."

"Fusion power we licked; static cling has us on the ropes. It’s a funny world."

"Truth and information are not the same thing!"

"And that vulgar gold lamé upholstery giving me a rash. You can dispute taste but you can’t stop it."

"I said, What are you, a federal employee or just a freelance zombie?"

"I remembered the sign in front of the cathedral:"

"If a dataline is running and there’s no one there to watch it, has anything really happened?"

"If fasting really had anything to do with enlightenment then millions of people throughout the ages had died of the secret of life. And the secret of life was, in its entirety, that starvation hurt like a bastard."

"“Is that the way you feel about it?” I asked. “I’m a lawyer. I deal with the law as it is, not how I feel about it.”"

"Meditation was such a loose term; you can do almost anything mentally and call it meditation."

"Everybody wants to be somebody but nobody wants to be just anybody."

"I pushed her back hard. “You don’t belong with them; you’re not special, you have no place in any unseen world; you’re like me and the rest of our family. Get used to it!” She looked at me like I’d slapped her. “Oh, sorry,” I said, feeling equally stung by her reaction. “It’s hell being ordinary, but that’s the human condition.”"

"Technology disgusts me. My senses tell me what I need to know. The rest is noise."

"There were those who insisted this had already happened, but they could never come up with any solid examples, only vague stories involving the cousin of a daughter of a friend-of-a-friend who overheard someone on an all-night bus telling someone else about it."

"If you need someone to believe something, make them go for a walk with you. Walking takes up most of the energy they’d use to disbelieve you."

"That was the real price, I thought. Once you had power, you ended up having to depend on it. Eventually, like anything else, it owned you. Eventually? No, from the beginning; we just don’t bother admitting it at first."

"“Truth and information are not the same thing. I promise you that’s a fact.” “So you told yourself. But you have to admit that they do coincide often enough to let us all get around in the world safely.”"

"Mindplayers didn't really address a lot about the criminal element of this particular world. Everybody in the Mindplayers world couldn't possibly live like the few people that you saw. A lot of times, a culture almost seems to float on top of its own black market, and things from that filter up through the culture. I get the feeling that this law-abiding peaceful thing that I live in now is almost never-never land - to a certain extent it's not even really real. I spent a decade working for Hallmark cards, which is supposed to epitomise sweetness and light and good living and ethics and morals. But Hallmark, like many American manufacturers, has a lot of things like toys and ornaments manufactured in the Far East, by people in sweat-shops. These are children, old people, poor people, people who don't have enough to eat; we get these things so cheaply because we simply use these people and throw them away. This is what I mean about our culture, our never-never land, floating on top of our underworld."

"If you can’t fuck it, and it doesn’t dance, eat it or throw it away."

"Fez gave her a squeeze. “You’re a genius, Sam-I-Am.” She squirmed away from him uncomfortably. “It just makes sense, is all.” “Sometimes that’s all it takes to be a genius.”"

"Old responses live long, die hard, and frequently leave a troublesome corpse."

"“‘Truth is cheap, but information costs.’ I can’t remember who said that.” “Vince What’s-His-Name,” said Sam. “Died in a terrorist raid or something. I thought you said all information should be free.” “It should. It isn’t. Knowledge is power. But power corrupts. Which means the Age of Fast Information is an extremely corrupt age in which to live.” “Aren’t they all?” Sam asked him."

"“Nyxnissa?” She looked back at the queen. “There are no happy endings, Nyxnissa.” “I know,” Nyx said. “Life keeps going.”"

"You could stand near him, listen to him speak, and feel as if you were in the presence of some wiser man, a true mullah. His uncles were the same. Rich, powerful men whose influence allowed them to profit from the war, not fight in it."

"Don’t confuse rescue and kidnapping. I have not asked to be rescued."

"It wasn’t what was done to you. Life was what you did with what was done to you."

"“We have a war to fight. You don’t understand. We fight in God’s name.” “I understand just fine,” Nyx said."

"The world could burn around her, the cities turn to dust, the cries of a hundred thousand fill the air, and she would get up after the fire died and walk barefoot and burned over the charred soil in search of clean water, a weapon, a purpose. She would rebuild."

"I’d say I was doing a great job submitting to God by submitting to my desires. Who do you think gave me desire in the first place?"

"Countries at war lived in a state of perpetual fear."

"“How can you read such a beautiful book and turn your back on it?” “Never said it wasn’t a beautiful book. I just don’t believe there’s some man up there in the black who gets off on watching us pound our head on the pavement six times a day."

"Not everything that’s beautiful is weak."

"A well-appointed prison is still a prison."

"She had already been to hell. One prayer more or less wouldn’t make any difference."

"A woman despises a man for loving her, unless she happens to return his love."

"Comfort is tedious when it lasts too long."

"Never does the soul feel so far from human life as when a man finds himself alone in the vistas of the moon, either in the streets of a sleeping city, the avenues of the woods, or by the border of the sea. Earth, swayed perhaps by her powerful satellite, withdraws her sympathy from him and he wanders in a white void, wondering if he was born to be thus annulled."

"The desolation of winter sustains our frail hopes. Nature is kindest then; she does not taunt us with fruition. It is the luxury of summer which tantalizes—her long, brilliant, blossoming days, her dewy, radiant nights."

"A habit grew upon me of consulting the sea as soon as I rose in the morning. Its aspect decided how my day would be spent. I watched it at last with constant study of its changes, seeking to understand its effect upon me mentally, and ever attracted by its awful materiality, for it always talked to me of the ease with which it could drown me. I was drawn to its shores by night; its vague sphere, swayed by some influence mightier than itself, which made its voice articulate, drew my soul out beside it, to utter speech for speech."

"The country is crazy with barrenness, and the sea mocks it with its terrible beauty."

"I hail the seasons as they go, I woo the sunshine, brave the wind, I scan the lily and the rose, I nod to every nodding tree, I follow every stream that flows, And wait beside the steadfast sea."