“So that's what--one "yes," one "not sure," and one "I had had a dream about a bug.”

“Johnny Battistini had gone to Japan once as a replacement drummer for a metal band past its prime ... a one-shot gig that he had talked about for years afterward. At the time, Theo had been frustrated by Johnny’s inability to describe Tokyo and why it had made such an impression on him. Although he spoke about it frequently ... he could never explain his fascination more clearly than: ‘It was just ... weird. It’s like a regular city, but then it’s all different and shit. But to them it’s not different. And that’s the really weird part!”

“People in science fiction flicks always seemed to know useful things about the places time travel took them. But what if the time traveler had been only an average history student? What then?”

“There is no such thing as an accident. That's what science is all about. (...) There are only patterns we don't yet recognize.”

“You show me what someone listens to, I’ll tell you everything you want to know about his soul. (For instance, a bunch of Nickelback albums would have indicated he never had a soul in the first place.)”

“Theo knew enough about women and their clothes to recognize she was trying to strike an appropriate balance between... what? Between liking him and hating him? Between wanting to look good and not wanting to look too available? Just because he knew a mixed message when he saw one didn't mean he knew exactly which messages were being mixed”

“During its timeless hours of movement and inspection, as it floated on the number-winds and learned from their shape and force, it had become aware of something else, something so far from the conceptual map of the environment it had originally been given as to briefly constitute a new danger to the Nemesis program's logical integrity.”