“Haven't you ever known someone rejected by a lover, who, consumed by rage and jealousy, never lets go? They look on from a distance, unseen but boiling inside. The emotion never seems to tire, this hatred mixed with intense obsession, even with a kind of twisted love.”

“Even mocking people helped their face stats. In the reputation economy, the only real way to hurt anyone was to ignore them completely. And it was pretty hard to ignore someone who made your blood boil.”

“Tally-When you looked around at everyone else how come you didn’t notice they were brain damaged?Az - We didn’t have much to compare our fellow citizens with. Only a few colleagues who seemed different from most people, more engaged, but that was hardly a surprise.History would indicate that the majority of people have always been sheep. Before the operation there were wars and mass hatred and clear cutting. Whatever these lesions make us, it isn’t a far cry from how humanity was in the rusty era. These days we’re just a bit easier to manage.”

“Gravity was something you could beat; all it took was hydrogen, hot air, or even a bit of rope. But being a girl was a miserable, never-ending struggle.”

“The Shrink always warned me that carriers stay wracked with lifelong guilt. It's not an uplifting thing having turned lovers into monsters. We feel bad that we haven't turned into monsters ourselves--survivor's guilt, that's called. And we feel a bit stupid that we didn't notice our own symptoms earlier. I mean, I'd been sort of wondering why the Atkins diet was giving me night vision. But that hadn't seemed like something to worry about...”

“Tally, do you ever suffer from sudden flashes of anger or euphoria, countersocial impulses, or feelings of superiority?”

“Reality had no gears, and you never knew what surprises would come spinning out of its chaos.”