“Do I have any recommendations for a Sadiri boys' night out?" I shrugged, smiled, and allowed myself a laugh. "I can come up with something."I did, too. The Ministry of Culture has all kinds of programmes, and I got someone to put together a package that even the Sadiri might enjoy. But people, this is Cygnus Beta. Yes, we have a few large cities and several towns -- we're not all country bumpkins, vagabonds and adventurers -- but there are few professional artists and actors, few galactic-standard museums and theatres. We simply can't afford them.”

“Judging other humans and finding them wanting is what the Sadiri do.”

“I find that sometimes if you just sit still, things have a way of finding you before you can find them.”

“I think if a story has a message it should be incidental and accidental, otherwise it leans too close to indoctrination.”

“In the beginning, God created human beings, which is to say God put the ingredients together, embedded the instructions for building on the template, and put it all into four separate eggs marked 'Some Assembly Required.”

“And there you have it...if I knew that I could only have a few nights in that man's arms or nothing, I would take those magic nights and use them to keep me warm for the rest of my life.”

“But, y'know, today I got a lot of help myself. There're tons of things we can't do ourselves, right? And that's why we're helped out. If someone, or something, can lend you a helping hand, great, I say! After all, we're all in this together!”