“Chicago happened slowly, like a migraine.”

“Night was spreading slowly around the spinning Earth. It should have been full of pinpricks of light. It was not. There were five billion people down there. What was going to happen soon would make barbarism look like a picnic - hot, nasty, and eventually given over to the ants.”

“Nothing, like something, happens anywhere.”

“The daylight faded slowly: distances collapsed and the world turned indigo and the wind blew cold enough to burn the skin on your face.”

“It doesn't happen like this! Everybody, you put him in a death trap, he pulls something outta his utility belt and he's away. Same bat time, same bat channel.”

“There are people who think that things that happen in fiction do not really happen. These people are wrong.”

“Gods are great," said Atsula, slowly, as if she were imparting a great secret. "But the heart is greater. For it is from our hearts they come, and to our hearts they shall return...”