“Beneath the violet pillar, in the vacuum before the roar of the cloud, there came a soft sound that might have been heard by those who listened closely: the gentle sigh of an idea unbound.”

“What was a face on television but a code, and what was the difference between these faces but a realignment of line and color to shift among signals? If he grasped deeply this language of symbols, grasped it beneath the surface, he could course through the currents of authority as they coursed through him like heat or the tremble of cold.”

“Although she didn't have the plumbing, she deluded herself that she was the modern W.C. (about Margaret Thatcher, M.T.)”

“We have seen these bodies, she would think, and even long after we are gone some particle in the universe will hold a memory of the words we once used to describe their beauty.”

“What place would that be, a whole world without roads? It was a panicking thought. A world without roads! He would go nowhere in such a place. He would be trapped where he was, he would have lived out his life only where he was born.”

“Then he would get into a plane and leave the field wide open; the field was crammed with paralegals, all of them stoutly armed with condoms.”

“There was the honour and austerity of money as he walked through art galleries, as he saw around him the collections of oil paintings by dead men, lit so carefully that warmth seemed to emanate from within - and not because their art was loved or understood but because it could be sold and bought for handsome sums.”