“Somehow, without noticing, Mosca had become old enough to hear about such things.”

“Even paradise could become a prison if one had enough time to take notice of the walls.”

“We’ was such a comforting word. ‘We’ meant weathering things together. Camaraderie. Safety in numbers. All the things that Havoc and Jade and Perch had talked about. And yet Mosca had seen all these things collapse within an hour of the dusk bugle.”

“And someday when the descendants of humanity have spread from star to star they won’t tell the children about the history of Ancient Earth until they’re old enough to bear it and when they learn they’ll weep to hear that such a thing as Death had ever once existed”

“Mosca had never tasted power before. It was a little like the feeling the gin had given her, but without the bitterness and the numbness in her nose.”

“Again and again, against all their best efforts to muck things up, the universe found ways to make things right. Heal wounds. Replace darkness with light. And, somehow, these things happened quietly, seamlessly, and without notice.”