“I desperately want to talk to her now. I want to ask her who it was who so deftly crafted and shaped the legend that was our love.”

“Want to talk about Shakespeare's sonnets?" asked Orphu of Io.Are you shitting me?" The moravecs loved the ancient human colloquial phrases, the more scatological the better.Yes," said Orphu. "I am most definitely shitting you, my friend.”

“You want to be a hero,” he repeated. “You want to be one of those rare human beings who make history, rather than merely watch it flow around them like water around a rock.”

“Who was Hitler?' I said.Tyrena smiled slightly. 'An Old Earth politician who did some writing.”

“It occurs to me that our survival may depend upon our talking to one another.”

“Francis Crozier now understood that the most desirable and erotic thing a woman could wear were the many modest layers such as Sophia Cracroft wore to dinner in the governor's house, enough silken fabric to conceal the lines of her body, allowing a man to concentrate on the exciting loveliness of her wit”

“Do you think it's ready?" I [Silenus, The Poet] asked. "It's perfect... a masterpiece.""Do you think it'll sell?" I asked. "No fucking way.”