“Our brains are dark globes lit by very distant stars.”

“The soul is a verb." He impales a lit candle on a spike. "Not a noun.”

“After my modest victory I played patience (the card game, not the virtue, never that) in the lounge, something I had not done since my ill-starred Tintagel honeymoon with Madame X.”

“Our lives are not our own. We are bound to others, past and present, and by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future.”

“What man ain't the honestest cove in his own eyes?" Grote's round face is a bronze moon in the dark. "'Tain't good intentions what paves the road to hell: it's self-justifyin's.”

“science devises ever bloodier means of war until humanity’s powers of destruction overcome our powers of creation and our civilisation drives itself to extinction.”

“The first of ‘Goose’s Two Laws of Survival.’ It runs thus, ‘The weak are meat the strong do eat.’ ” ... Henry grinned in the dark & cleared his throat. “The second law of survival states that there is no second law. Eat or be eaten. That’s it.”