“quantum reality, and finding itself emerging in a continuum it had no prior conception of: an energistic vacuum”

“You convinced yourselves we're just a bunch of regular lads who got a bad break in life. Anything else would have cracked your dream open and made you face reality. Illusion is easy. Illusion is the loser's way out. Your way. ”

“Ego had brought him to this point, that stupid refusal to quit the case, to simply do the job according to procedure and pick up the monthly salary transfer. Now look where it had brought him, sitting right next to a crapping great fusion bomb.”

“Are you sure it is trustworthy, Mellanie?" "I'd be dead if it wasn't.""Yes, I suppose that does generate a respectable level of personal confidence.”

“You cannot impose ideologies on people who do not embrace it wholeheartedly.”

“How many twenty-second-century bureaucrats did it take to change a light panel?We'll have a sub-committee meeting and get back to you with an estimate.”

“...Aldersgate Street, the bottom of the A1 - which was the modern designation of the original Great North Road, built by the Romans two thousand years ago to march its garrisons to the very edge of the empire three hundred miles to the north. Their duty was to reinforce Hadrian's Wall, keeping the outer darkness at bay and the empire safe.”