“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.”

“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.”

“Humanity, let us say, is like people packed in an automobile which is traveling downhill without lights at terrific speed and driven by a four-year-old child. The signposts along the way are all marked 'Progress.”

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

“I am experiencing a measure of excitement combined with increasing pleasure, which is perhaps manifesting as an expression of amusement."It was the first time he had ever used the scales to describe his emotions. "I love it when you talk dirty," I whispered ...”

“A God who kept tinkering with the universe was absurd; a God who interfered with human freedom and creativity was a tyrant. If God is seen as a self in a world of his own, an ego thatrelates to a thought, a cause separate from its effect, he becomes a being, not Being itself. An omnipotent, all‐knowing tyrant is not so different from earthly dictators who make everything andeverybody mere cogs in the machine which they controlled. An atheism that rejects such a God is amply justified.”

“The man was a natural, a real pleasure to watch--and not only for his skill. God certainly hadn't put him together on a Friday afternoon.”