“You were baptized?""My sister told me that yes, Father baptized me shortly after birth. My mother was a Protestant of a faith that deplored infant baptism, so they had a quarrel about it." The Bishop held out his hand to lift the Speaker to his feet. The Speaker chuckled. "Imagine. A closet Catholic and a lapsed Mormon, quarreling over religious procedures that they both claimed not to believe in.”

“You were the one who threatened us with an Inquisitor," the Bishop reminded him. With a smile.The Speaker's smile was just as chilly. "And you're the one who told the people I was Satan and they shouldn't talk to me.”

“When a brother is given the right to pass into the third life as a father, then he chooses his greatest rival or his truest friend to give him passage. You. Speaker—ever since I first learned Stark and read The Hive Queen and the Hegemon, I waited for you. I said many times to my father, Rooter, of all humans he is the one who will understand us. Then Rooter told me when your starship came, that it was you and the hive queen aboard that ship, and I knew then that you had come to give me passage, if only I did well.""You did well, Human.”

“there were crimes and quarrels, alongside kindness and cooperation; there were people who loved each other and people who did not; it was a human world.”

“Order and disorder', said the speaker, 'they each have their beauty.”

“Are you all right, Sir?" asked Hezekiah."Just fighting over old battles in my mind," said John. "It's the problem with age. You have all these rusty arguments, and no quarrel to use them in. My brain is a museum, but alas, I'm the only visitor, and even I am not terribly interested in the displays."Hezekiah laughed, but there was affection in it. "I would love nothing better than to visit there. But I'm afraid I'd be tempted to loot the place, and carry it all away with me.”

“You killed more people than anybody in history.""Be the best at whatever you do, that's what my mother always told me.”