"Revachol is the disgraced former capital of the world, divided into zones of control under foreign occupation -- half a century after a failed world revolution. She is central to our moment in time."

"You really dropped the ball, Harry. Four point six billion people -- and you failed every single one of them. You really fucked up."

"- That isn't just a five-pointed star -- it's an inverted white pentagram cradled in a wreath of antlers. The iconography of communism, in other words."

"The star-and-antlers was developed in the sixth decade of the last century and quickly adopted by Mazov and the communards during the Revolution […] The wreath of antlers represents a natural crown. It was about building a society that could exist in accord with the natural world -- and at the same time above it. [Why is the star upside down?] To symbolize the toppling of the old order. [Why white?] Because white is the colour of peace."

"You can see it so clearly. In a dark alley behind a boite de nuit, a young couple is having sex on a shopping cart. Their eyes are bloodshot and their brains fried. They are in the throes of narcomania On the top floor of an office building, a young exec takes a drag from a short spliff and his eyes roll to the back of his skull. He too is a narcomaniac. Someone needs to take a stand. The world needs a Narc. The world needs you. (Don't worry, you can still drink and smoke, those aren't real drugs.)"

"His eyes are milky white and blind to the world, protruding comically from their sockets. There is no one home, just sub-aquatic terrors there."

"Nudity is shameful. No officer of the law should ever be caught sans pantalones."

"Yeah, it's another copotype -- the worst one. The most savage and brutal. The Art Cop. Nothing is good enough for him. Everything is shit. You have to employ an armada of adjectives to depict and demean the mediocrity of the works and visual institutions around you. Really flex that critical muscle. Until the vocabulary for PUNISHING mediocrity becomes second nature."

"Maybe you should stop obsessing about your own -- and other people's -- sexuality? Feels like it’s about time to do that. You’ve thought about this for eight hours?! Not only should you stop, you should tell Kim you've stopped obsessing about other people's sexuality too. I'm sure he'd appreciate it. Unless you already got him killed because you were obsessing about your sexuality. (There’s no way of telling from within your brain, but for your own sake: please say you didn’t.)"

"In dark times, should the stars also go out?"

"What kind of cop are you?"

"Your shit is apart, and it's rather unbecoming of a cop and a human being. It's supposed to be the opposite of that: together. Compressed in a small area. To achieve a solid level of shit-compression, squeeze your butt-cheeks together for 30 minutes. Do something similar with the two hemispheres of your brain. Talk to people, maybe that will help."

"Bizarre scientific news from Revachol West today, where a police officer's shit has been observed at a pressure of around 495 giga-decimals. These metallic hydrogen levels of shit-togetherness were thought to exist only at the center of collapsing stars, not law officials. It remains to be seen how long the shit-singularity lasts."

"0.000% of Communism has been built. Evil child-murdering billionaires still rule the world with a shit-eating grin. All he has managed to do is make himself sad. He is starting to suspect Kras Mazov fucked him over personally with his socio-economic theory. It has, however, made him into a very, very smart boy with something like a university degree in Truth. Instead of building Communism, he now builds a precise model of this grotesque, duplicitous world."

"You cannot open all the doors. You have to integrate this into your character. Some doors will forever remain closed. Even if every single other door will open at one time or another, maybe to a key, or maybe to some sort of tool meant for opening doors... But this one will never accede to such commands. A realization crucial to personal growth. Crucial."

"A detective RPG"

"By Heavens, why would he not be corrupt? We live in a harsh and disordered world, see. […] the old man is corrupt for our benefit and we know it. Appreciate it, even. He is, personally, not too lavish."

"Listen, you Moralintern lackeys. You're a mob, enforcing the unlawful privatization of Revachol. Twenty fat men in the Occident are stealing it all -- and you're their body guards."

"From crystal to smoke, an expression describing the rigid structures of capitalism turning to smoke under communism."

"Even by the standard of the Filippian kings, Old Sumptuous Filippe was known for his profligacy. […] he blew through the whole national treasury, starting the decline of one of the penultimate century's greatest superpowers: the Suzerain of Revachol. His own maladministration foreshadowed the fall of the monarchy during the Antecentennial Revolution, an end to his family line and the monarchy on the Insulindian isola. […] Stories have it that he had his bedroom converted into a treasure chamber where he stored unfathomable wealth: krugerrands, bars of gold, ornate weaponry, armour, and various chalices. He called it the Sol Aurum. It was obscene. There were whispers he slept on a huge pile of gold-dipped feathers like some obese dragon, instead of a bed like a normal person."

"René, you're a man with a fork in a world of soup. Please... let's just try to enjoy the game, alright?"

"Knowledge like that isn't just obscure; it's unknowable. Dangerous theoretical facts like that are probably protected under the Coalition Government's Articles of Dominion, Title XIV, Article 7c. While an expert might be able to suss it out on their own, a layman like you has no hope."

"No superiors can relieve me of my duty, you bulldozed them all to a mass grave for trying to free humanity."

"First, if you have a side-bitch ideology cooking somewhere, don't sweat it. Fightin' indirect taxation for the Gossamer State is compatible with all creeds. It's cool like that. You're a cool anarchist now. Unless you don't want to be an anarchist. Whatever! Stuff this meal ticket in your eye-socket and let's see if we can steal some love back from the robber barons at the customs agency and the banditos at The Insulindian Financial Oversight and Competition Committee."

"Detective, each of us has our part to play in the world. My part is to solve crimes. I am under no illusion that my role isn't a minor one, in the scheme of things... but I embrace it because it's my role, and it's yours too, detective, whether you accept it or not!"

"Moralists don't really have beliefs. Sometimes they stumble on one, like on a child's toy left on the carpet. The toy must be put away immediately. And the child reprimanded. Centrism isn't change -- not even incremental change. It is control. Over yourself and the world. Exercise it. Look up at the sky, at the dark shapes of Coalition airships hanging there. Ask yourself: is there something sinister in moralism? And then answer: no. God is in his heaven. Everything is normal on Earth."

"The mask of humanity fall[s] from capital. It has to take it off to kill everyone -- everything you love; all the hope and tenderness in the world. It has to take it off, just for one second. To do the deed."

"The colour of moralism is blue. The official motto of the Moralintern, or Moralist International, is: 'A blue forget-me-not; a piece of the grey sky'. Unofficial: 'For a moment, there was hope'"

"Everything is calm in the eye of the racestorm. Your mind is lucid and bright. The mindbending phylogenetics appear more distant and, to be fair, a little ridiculous. The great Race Mystery has cleared up."

"You need to spread that deregulation gospel to the people. Tell them about that foreign fare tax. Preach that 98% gross burden. Preach it, preacher man! Set the brothas free. Taxes are racist."

"“You do not speak his name, craven! Although he was a clown..." he adds. He turns back to you. "But he was our clown. Ours to ridicule -- and to mourn.""

"I love Revachol, though. I hope she loves me too."

"You asked that question because you're still under the influence of ideology. That's natural. You're like a fish that's only now discovering that her whole life has been dictated by the movements of sea currents. That's what ideology is. It's like there are these invisible forces everywhere, pushing and tugging you this way and that, and you don't even know they're *there*."

"You don't get to choose your posse, they choose you. Mine are idiots, but they're mine."

"Being off speed makes Cuno sad. Makes Cuno think about shit."

"The manufacturing and sale of automatic rifles was curtailed after the Revolution. The destructive power of such tools proved to be... too much. We do need to retain some humanity in this world."

"Perhaps you can climb them. We're not climbing anything. I'm 43 years old -- and I plan to live to see 70."

"[on a drug Harry shows him] Cuno doesn't do that radioactive shit. Makes Cuno's dick fall off. Cuno's got a huge dick."

"Every school of thought and government has failed in this city -- but I love it nonetheless. It belongs to me as much as it belongs to you."

"[On Communism] You can’t make an omelette without breaking a few million eggs."

"This guy's your buddy-buddy. You feel it immediately: you belong to an organization. A fraternity. Of drunks."

"What do they believe in? They are Dolorians. They believe they continue the humanist project set forth by Her Innocence Dolores Dei four centuries ago. Others say they're just technocrats."

"Pig, these are FALN Modulars! Liquid fit, performance crotch, urban survival shit! Made in Mirova... by scientists. Pants scientists."

"OFFSHOOTS OF THE SEMENESE PEOPLE INVENTED DISCO WHILE HAVING SEX UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF COCAINE. IT IS A SHAME UPON MY RACE - BUT WHAT IS DONE IS DONE."

"YOU DOMINATED LESSER CULTURES -- LIKE THE DEFORMED HIMEANS AND THE INEXPLICABLY POTATO-OBSESSED KOJKOS -- BUT NOW YOUR ASCENT TO THE GENETIC SUMMIT HAS HALTED. YOU ARE OBSESSED WITH SADNESS AND WITH FRIVOLOUS POP CULTURE."

"The Suzerain is the King. Has everyone forgotten already?" He then slowly nods and says to himself: "They've forgotten already."

"YOUR BODY BETRAYS YOUR DEGENRACY."

"The pale was thought to be impregnable, perpetual. […] Irene La Navigateur, the Queen of Suresne, sent eight expeditions, one after the other, into the mass at the edge of the world. Five of the crews did not return. Two did, but had lost their minds."

"Achromatic, odourless, featureless. The pale is the enemy of matter and life. It is not like any other -- or any thing in the world. It is the transition state of being into nothingness."

"Capital has the ability to subsume all critiques into itself. Even those who would critique capital end up reinforcing it instead..."