“If you don't start playing by my rules, you'll be lucky to be licking stamps in some lowly, legal aid office.”

“I was worried about sex," he went on. "But you know what, Sulie? It's like being told I can't have any caviar for the next couple years. I don't even like caviar. And when you come right down to it, I don't want sex right now. I supposed you punched that into the computer? 'Cut down sex drive, increase euphoria'? Anyway, it finally penetrated my little brain that I was just making trouble for myself, worrying about whether I could get along without something I really didn't want. It's a reflection of what I think other people think I should want.”

“Before you know it, you'll be smiling at her across the breakfast table.""I don't smile," Cahill said, though he was having to fight his amusement."So you'll be scowling at her across the breakfast table. That isn't my point.”

“Wealth ... or death. Those were the choices Gateway offered. Humans had discovered this artificial spaceport, full of working interstellar ships left behind by the mysterious, vanished Heechee. Their destinations are preprogrammed. They are easy to operate, but impossible to control. Some came back with discoveries which made their intrepid pilots rich; others returned with their remains barely identifiable. It was the ultimate game of Russian roulette, but in this resource-starved future there was no shortage of desperate.”

“They were two lovely choices. One of them meant giving up every chance of a decent life forever...and the other one scared me out of my mind.”

“You can't trust reason. We threw it out of the ad profession long ago and have never missed it.”

“On this day I want to tell you about, which will be about a thousand years from now, there were a boy, a girl and a love story.”