"Seeker laughed. “You are so—well, human. You always think you are the ultimate.” “And…we’re not.” Seeker inspected the ceiling. “It seems unlikely.”"

"The intellectual breeds of humans think in terms of abstractions. But most people have emotions and think they are having ideas."

"Individual recollections of the past are easily shaped by others. After a while they need have little bearing on the once-lived events."

"Nothing is eternal—including prisons."

"“How can you shrug off history?”… “By studied neglect.”"

"In any case, caution outweighed theory, as mice knew about elephants."

"You need friends to keep you on your feet, and enemies to keep you on your toes."

"Good food was like sex, one of life’s blessings, but they both lost their edge when talked about too much."

"History held counterexamples to any facile rule."

"They all lived as ants in the shadow of mountains of millennia, and time’s sheer mass shaded every word."

"“You humans have emotions,” Seeker said slowly, “but more often emotions have you.”"

"For her it was a slippery descent into a labyrinth where twin urges fought, revenge versus survival. These two instincts, already ancient before the first hominid walked, rarely married with any security. Yet if she did not feel the pinch of their competition, she would not be, by her own judgment, a true human."

"From birth it had integrated each experience with its innate sense of balance and appropriate scale—indeed, this was the sole purpose of its conscious being."

"In his view, the true deep human fantasy was the conviction of safety. Men believed their women were devoted; wives felt that their men were dependable. Both ignored contrary evidence."

"Naturals felt best in groups of a hundred or so, and better if only a few dozen were involved. Hunting parties had been about that size, for the long-extinct big game. Many important institutions were of the same rough scale: the ancient village, governing councils of nations, commanding elites of vast armies, teams playing games, orchestras, family fests. All human enterprises that worked were of that size, and nearly everything that failed was not."

"But then, growing up was not supposed to be easy. One Mom remarked offhandedly, “It’s the toughest work you’ll ever do.”"

"The evolutionary routes are many, she knew, wending through the howling wilderness of the maladaptive, on to their severely narrowed destinations. Biology abounded with convergent examples, destinations arrived at along very different paths. Fruiting bodies of slime molds and myxobacteria alike evolved multicelled advances. Warmbloodedness came forth several times, as did live birth and even penile tumescence. The eyes did indeed have it—as seen in the camera-like eyes of vertebrates and octopi, and the similar tiny preceptors of worms and jellyfish. Nature invented over and over again the mechanisms used by diverse organisms to hear, smell, echolocate, sense the prickle of electric and magnetic fields."

"None of the above. That’s often the right answer, and bugger the exams."

"Better be a bit more diplomatic. Translation: cover your scientific ass."

"“Why paired?” Viktor asked. “Have two sexes?” “Hard to imagine how electromagnetic creatures could,” Mary Kay said. Viktor grinned. “Lack of imagination is not an argument. Especially lately.”"

"They had a legend about a Chemical pinned to a piece of dead matter and allowed to die that way—Diminished to extinction! Apparently a commonplace among Chemicals. Yet after this fearsome loss, the identity emerged from its full subtraction—to claim life again. Such a desperate story! Elementary knowledge tells us that such things do not happen, of course."

"There was more known, but always more to be known. Yes, she thought, and the unknown can masquerade as the unknowable."

"Anyway, the Shanna woman was abrasive, self-obsessed, smug—and those were her good points. Julia suspected that in a pinch the woman might also be careless, the one sin reality never forgave."

"Always keep your words soft and sweet, just in case you have to eat them."

"Definitions, her grandmother once said, had to be like a fat man’s belt—big enough to cover the subject but elastic enough to allow for change."

"Would an alien outsider judge America’s performance by My Lai and Wounded Knee or by Lincoln and Jefferson?"

"“I think,” Jordin said mildly, “a professional biologist would label that aggressive behavior.”"

"“Quite patently artificial,” she said. “Looks like it to me, and I’m just a physicist.” “I thought you were an engineer-pilot.” “Hey, physicists can do anything.” “Um. So they think. But not biology…”"

"She had always admired the way bureaucracies spontaneously produced leaden prose, blandly sliding from the mouths of people who absolutely believed everything they said."

"Nobody out here was going to find an alternative here to Earth’s tiresome clash of selfish individualisms and stifling collectivisms."

"Puzzled frowns in the audience. Science reporters they might be, but high school chemistry was going a bit too deep for most."

"Shanna put on the last movement of Beethoven’s Fifth and turned up the gain. Ludwig von Cornball, they had called him back at Moonbase One. Hipitude: post-postmodern irony. All because she played ol’ Ludwig so much—but who was more appropriate? What spirit better expressed the grandeur of an expedition to the edge of the solar system?"

"He’s an order of magnitude better than mere diplomats. He’s a conniver."

"Not sure. When don’t know, do experiment."

"After weeks of indoor work it actually felt good to be doing something—clean, direct, muscles and mind."

"Exercise erased cares."

"Science was a systematic way to avoid fooling yourself, after all."

"Media bloomed with florid discussions between completely uninformed people about every detail imaginable."

"“Viktor! Don’t tell me you cheated! A gentleman doesn’t cheat at cards.” “Am captain, not gentleman.”"

"That’s absurd. This is real life, not some tabloid fantasy."

"“It was just good luck, last minute luck.” “Your ‘luck’ was mostly sweat and intuition.”"

"All the astronauts were easy on the eyes. No coincidence. NASA didn’t train people the public wouldn’t want to watch."

"That’s how business works. There’s always somebody coming in on your blind side."

"Whole world is sitting on ass, watching glorious Twenty-first century on TV."

"She had long ago stopped counting how many times the 0.38 g of Mars had helped them through crucial moments. It had proved the only useful aspect of the planet."

"“I’ll be thinking of you as they roll me into a grave marked ‘Nobody Special.’”"

"To peer through the quick stubble of mathematics and see the wonders lurking behind was to momentarily live in the infinite, beyond the press of the ordinary world where everyone else dwelled in ignorance."

"Government doesn’t often move quickly, but when they do, it’s like an elephant stampede."

"Minds embodies in strange shapes would still find themselves sharpened against evolution’s ceaseless whetstone. What challenges would they face? In the end the universe as a whole was life’s ultimate opponent."