“His jaw was slack and his mouth open, and he wondered if perhaps he would drown eventually; drowned by the falling rain.”

“The truth is not always useful, not always good. It’s like putting your faith in water. Yes, we need the rain, but too much can sweep you away in a flood and drown you. Like all great natural, elemental forces, the truth needs to be channeled, managed, controlled and intelligently, morally allocated.”

“There's something very... I don't know; primitive, perhaps, about you, Gurgeh. You've never changed sex, have you?' He shook his head. 'Or slept with a man?' Another shake. 'I thought so,' Yay said. 'You're strange, Gurgeh.' She drained her glass.”

“All of it dust now, all of their precious humanoid civilization ground to junk under glaciers or weathered away by wind and spray and rain and frozen ice - all of it. Only this pathetic maze-tomb left. So much for their humanity, or whatever they chose to call it, thought Unaha-Closp. Only their machines remained. But would any of the others learn? Would they see this for what it was, this frozen rockball? Would they, indeed!”

“Don't you have a religion?" Dorolow asked Horza."Yes," he replied, not taking his eyes away from the screen on the wall above the end of the main mess-room table. "My survival.""So... your religion dies with you. How sad," Dorolow said, looking back from Horza to the screen. The Changer let the remark pass.”

“But it was pointless, it was stupid; he thought about thoughtless things. If I were a seabird . . . but how could you be a seabird? If you were a seabird your brain would be tiny and stupid and you would love half-rotted fish guts and tweaking the eyes out of little grazing animals; you would know no poetry and you could never appreciate flying as fully as the human on the ground yearning to be you.If you wanted to be a seabird you deserved to be one.”

“The bomb lives only as it is falling.”