“I was under the librarians' protection. Civil servants and servants of civility, they had my back. They would be whatever they needed to be that day: information professionals, teachers, police, community organizers, computer technicians, historians, confidantes, clerks, social workers, storytellers, or, in this case, guardians of my peace.”

“Though we were all taught to be proud of living in this great parliamentary democracy the civil servants who ran it were a fearsome bunch - a nameless mass of people with jobs (police, social workers, record-keepers, teachers, councilmen) whose sole purpose was to keep everyone shuffling from birth to death in a nice orderly queue. Surely some social-service record had been passed to the local constabulary bearing a huge black question mark beside the name Finn and the scrawled words, " Why isn't this boy in school”

“When politicians and civil servants hear the word culture they feel for their blue pencils.”

“I'm a disgruntled ex-civil servant, and I'm armed. If you don't process my license right now I'm going to start making small, yet significant holes in people.”

“Not only had he lost the only girl he'd ever loved, he'd lost her in duplicate, like some heartbroken but highly efficient civil servant.”

“Guardians were made from the beasts that rule their souls, forced to share a human body so they would be servants to the Keepers.”