“Heck, everything we decide will be wrong," said Step, "because no matter what we do, something bad will happen later. So I refuse to regret any of it.”

“Does it help if we're so strong-willed, stubborn, ambitious, and selfish that we always overcome everything in our way no matter what?" asked Wang-mu."I think those are the pertinent virtues, yes," said Peter."Then let's do it. That's us in spades.”

“Nobodys life ever goes according to plan. So why do we keep on planning?Because that's how we know who we are. By what we intend to be. By what we try to become. And fail.I don't say 'fail'. I saw we aim and miss. But we still hit something.”

“We don't read novels to have an experience like life. Heck, we're living lives, complete with all the incompleteness. We turn to fiction to have an author assure us that it means something.”

“In philosophy class I think we finally decided that 'good' is an infinitely recursive term - it can't be defined except in terms of itself. Good is good because it's better than bad, though why it's better to be good than bad depends on how you define good, and on and on.”

“Everybody dies. What matters is what you do between now and when it happens to you.”

“So that's it?" asked the expendable."Final decision," said Ram. "And it's the right one.""Why do you think so?""Because we live or die, we'll learn something important from jumping into the fold. Thousands of future travelers will either follow us or not. But if we don't make the jump, we'll learn nothing, have no new options.""A lovely speech. It has been sent back to Earth. It will inspire millions.""Shut up," said Ram.”