“It’s still a load. If there was balance, the soldier boys would all be dead, and we’d be sitting pretty in the middle of the Drowned Cities, shipping marble and steel and copper and getting paid Red Chinese for every kilo. We’d be rich and they’d be dead, if there was such a thing as the Scavenge God, or his scales. And that goes double for the Deepwater priests. They’re all full of it. Nothing balances out.”

“It’s not human to let go of love, even when it’s dead. We expected one of these monthlyanniversaries to be the Final Goodbye. We figured that we’d said all our goodbyes, and given up all the tears we had to give. We’d passed the testand would get back what we’d lost. But instead, every anniversary it hurt more, and every anniversary it felt like she was further away from comingback. The idea that there wouldn’t be a final goodbye—that was a hard goodbye to say in itself and, at that point, still an impossible goodbye. Noprivate eye has to tell you it’s a long goodbye.”

“If life was fair, we’d get treated the way the we treat others and if life was fair, we’d get paid exactly what we are worth. And in the end, we’d all get exactly what we deserve. So, son, maybe it’s better if life isn’t fair. Sometimes I’m thankful that life isn’t fair.”

“No one talks about it. No one talks about them at all. “The Ancients prefer discretion,” Mom once told me. But some say it’s because they’re so freakish we’d drop dead of fright. Others say they’re too attractive, too tempting. I prefer this theory.”

“I realized that you can get so used to certain luxuries that you start to think they’re necessities, but when you have to forgo them, you come to see that you don’t need them after all. There was a big difference between needing things and wanting things—though a lot of people had trouble telling the two apart—and at the ranch, I could see, we’d have pretty much everything we’d need but precious little else.”

“It’s all about balance. Balancing exercise, food, and life. No excesses.”