“Despite what I said before, it had not been a fear of infecting other people or poor health that had stopped me from going, but vanity. It was a good lesson.”

“Despite my vanity, I fear for my sanity.”

“The discrepancy between the modern observance and the prescriptions of the Rule had struck me ever since the novitiate, and no satisfactory explanation had ever been given to me. People said that man had changed: the weakness of people's health no longer allows us to fast. Was it true?”

“I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.”

“For too long, and despite what people told me, I had fallen for what the culture said about beauty, youth, features, heights, weights, hair textures, upper arms.”

“How many people are we going to lose before the universe decides we've had enough?" Carly asked me. I didn't answer, but if I had known what was coming I would have said, "All of them.”