“Japanese had never seen a Western-style circus, and most of them had probably never seen foreigners, either.”

“Even if there are no new Mighty Atom manga or films created, the Mighty Atom character has become a permanent fixture of both Japanese and global pop culture.”

“Comics are drawings, not photographs, and as such they present a subjective view of reality.”

“Japan is the first nation in the world to accord 'comic books'--originally a 'humorous' form of entertainment mainly for young people--nearly the same social status as novels and films.”

“You can't trust reason. We threw it out of the ad profession long ago and have never missed it.”

“Spend twenty years there and you ask yourself how there can still be strangers with so many familiar faces ... it's probably that cities generate strangers continuously ...”

“Wealth ... or death. Those were the choices Gateway offered. Humans had discovered this artificial spaceport, full of working interstellar ships left behind by the mysterious, vanished Heechee. Their destinations are preprogrammed. They are easy to operate, but impossible to control. Some came back with discoveries which made their intrepid pilots rich; others returned with their remains barely identifiable. It was the ultimate game of Russian roulette, but in this resource-starved future there was no shortage of desperate.”