“Humans were peculiar. They were by turns squeamish and appallingly violent.”

“Luce's new stranger children were small and beautiful and violent.”

“Capacity for love in its higher forms seems to be peculiarly human although even in humans it is still peculiar.”

“I turned to my own bunk and examined it with a kind of appalled fascination. If the mattress stains were anything to go by, a previous user had not so much suffered from incontinence as rejoiced in it. He had evidently included the pillow in his celebrations.”

“What to wear? I could think of no guidelines on what we were wearing this season to a party forced on you to celebrate an unwanted engagement that might turn into a violent confrontation with a vengeful maniac. Clearly brown shoes were out, but beyond that nothing really seemed de rigueur.”

“But now there were ten bells. And the bell for Lost-Hope was ringing violently.”