“Middle-class prosperity is lapidary; the flow of cash rounds and smooths a person like water does riverbed stones.”

“...class is more than income - it has to do with knowing where you stand in a web of social relationships.”

“Besides, interesting things happen along borders—transitions—not in the middle where everything is the same.”

“Maybe this was all down to some supernatural effect, such as grace, that flowed through people's lives even if they didn't understand why.”

“It’s, like, one of them drug dealer boats,” Vic says, looking through his magic sight. “Five guys on it. Headed our way.” He fires another round. “Correction. Four guys on it.” Boom. “Correction, they’re not headed our way anymore.” Boom. A fireball erupts from the ocean two hundred feet away. “Correction. No boat.”

“Humans needed water or they would die, but dirty water killed as surely as thirst. You had to boil it before you drank it. This culture around tea was a way of tiptoeing along the knife edge between those two ways of dying.”

“Just aiming a speely input device, or a Farspark chambre, or whatever you call it... a speelycaptor... at something doesn't collect what is meaningful to me. I need someone to gather it in with all their senses, mix it round in their head, and make it over into words.”