“Murderers with severe personality disorders, police had learned, sometimes could fool a lie detector because they lacked shame and guilt, and didn’t feel the normal stress when lying.”

“I wondered whether Mrs. Shears had told the police that I had killed Wellington and whether, when the police found out that she had lied, she would go to prison. Because telling lies about people is called slander.”

“Daniel had no idea what was happening to him. He felt sick. No, he didn’t feel sick. He didn’t feel sick. That was the problem. Or, it wasn’t a problem. Was it? Was it a problem when you didn’t feel normal, and that made you smile because normal never really felt right anyway?”

“Only a silly sober fool could think it; imagine gloating over such nonsense (because in one sense the drinker learns wisdom, in the words of Goethe or Blake or whichever it was "the pathway to wisdom lies through excess")”

“The Operative tried to implement the Purusey breathing technique, which has been proven effective at fooling polygraphs. There is no conclusive evidence as towhether it is effective at masking the internal lie detectors of fifteen-year-old boys.”

“He wondered vaguely whether in the abolished past it had been a normal experience to lie in bed like this, in the cool of a summer evening, a man and a woman with no clothes on, making love when they chose, talking of what they chose, not feeling any compulsion to get up, simply lying there and listening to peaceful sounds outside. Surely there could never have been a time when that seemed ordinary?”