“What I thought we might have a conversation about, is basically I do math, sir, not clandestine operations that severely deplete my mental resources.”

“You and me are real people, operating in a real world. We are not figments of each other’s imagination. I am the architect of my own self, my own character and destiny. It is no use whingeing about what I might have been, I am the things I have done and nothing more. We are all free, completely free. We can each do any damn thing we want. Which is more than most of us dare to imagine.”

“Perchance you shall, fair sir," said Nigel, "for all that I have seen of you fills me with this desire to go further with you. It is in my mind that we might turn this thing to profit and to honour, for when Sir Robert has spoken to you, I am free to do with you as I will.”

“… what right [do] people in wealthy countries have to blame the poor for their poverty, much less for humanity’s environmental dilemma, when it [is] rich countries’ consumption patterns that [are] responsible for the vast majority of the world’s resource depletion and ecosystem destruction?”

“Who ARE You?”This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation. Alice replied, rather shyly,“I--I hardly know, sir, just at present-- at least I know who I WAS when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.”

“I don't have any regrets, really, except that one. I wanted to write about you, about us, really. Do you know what I mean? I wanted to write about everything, the life we're having and the lives we might have had. I wanted to write about all the ways we might have died.”