“I had to ride my bike to and from their god damn plant way up north in the high-chemical crime district, and reachable only by riding on the shoulder of some major freeways. I could feel the years ticking off my life expectancy as the mile markers struggled by.”

“I had to ride slow because I was taking my guerrilla route, the one I follow when I assume that everyone in a car is out to get me. My nighttime attitude is, anyone can run you down and get away with it. Why give some drunk the chance to plaster me against a car? That's why I don't even own a bike light, or one of those godawful reflective suits. Because if you've put yourself in a position where someone has to see you in order for you to be safe--to see you, and to give a fuck--you've already blown it... We had a nice ride through the darkness. On those bikes we were weak and vulnerable, but invisible, elusive, aware of everything within a two-block radius.”

“Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. If I moved to a martial-arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family was wiped out by Colombian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, and devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I just dropped out and devoted my life to being bad.”

“Other bits of England might be cramped, crowded, and cluttered, but only because all the available space had been claimed by this guest suite. It was situated right in Trinity College, and Richard guessed it had been laid out eight hundred years ago so that noble guests could ride their horses directly into the bedchamber and bring all of their squires and wolfhounds with them too.”

“Hiro watches the large, radioactive, spear-throwing killer drug lord ride his motorcycle into Chinatown. Which is the same as riding it into China, as far as chasing him down is concerned.”

“She definitely heard the words for airplane and airport, which delighted some little-girl part of her soul (“Yay, going on a trip!”) even as her higher brain was ticking off all the bad things that could happen when men like Jones came into proximity with jet aircraft.”

“Hacker with Bullhorn: "Save your money! Accept one of our free tanks! It is invulnerable, and can drive across rocks and swamps at ninety miles an hour while getting a hundred miles to the gallon!"Prospective Station Wagon Buyer: "I know what you say is true...but...er...I don't know how to maintain a tank!"Bullhorn: "You don't know how to maintain a station wagon either!"Buyer: "But this dealership has mechanics on staff. If something goes wrong with my station wagon, I can take a day off work, bring it here, and pay them to work on it while I sit in the waiting room for hours, listening to elevator music."Bullhorn: "But if you accept one of our free tanks, we will send volunteers to your house to fix it for free while you sleep!"Buyer: "Stay away from my house, you freak!”