“He, I know - for the question had been discussed among us long before the Time Machine was made - thought but cheerlessly of the Advancement of Mankind, and saw in the growing pile of civilisation only a foolish heaping that must inevitably fall back upon and destroy its makers in the end.”

“I know,' said Winter, 'but they don't know.' And he went on with a thought he had been having. 'A time-minded people,' he said, 'and the time is nearly up. They think that just because they have only one leader and one head, we are all like that. They know that ten heads lopped off will destroy them, but we are a free people; we have as many heads as we have people, and in a time of need leaders pop up among us like mushrooms.”

“And how to stop the rot? How to salvage something from time's passage? How long before the map makers decide to erase this structure completely? Before it becomes a nameless ruin? And then a mere pile of stones? Mossed over. Forgotten. How long before they lift its name from their charts and from our collective memory? The only thing I can do is fill the place with music.”

“It's always been you, Caro. The first time I saw you, I thought you were the most beautiful girl that I'd ever seen. I thought you must be a princess like Cinderella. It's only ever been you.”

“Silence upon silence, with a heaping pile of extra silence.”

“Before the battle they had been discussing whether there might be life after death, and Windham and Rochester had made a pact that if there was, the first to die would come back and tell the other. But, said Rochester, he [Windham] never did.”