“Louie liked watching rain - it was always so sad and interesting at the same time, like sitting with a friend who was crying.”

“I had them running for two months once, so about one-fifty billion miles a second - those big numbers, sometimes they seem to stare right back at you, don't they?”

“He imagined that the great dark abyss of space was alive and that he might attract its attention if he stared too long into it - that it might twist and stir and fix its pitiless gaze upon him.”

“That is not grease upon your person, Mr Gage, it is blood - blood from the endless fight to steal power from a miserly and begrudging universe.”

“Individual customs and taboos do sometimes present particular problems - the Dennash, for example, have various rituals associated with passing faecal matter that require considerable space and equipment, as well as a priest.”

“It was at this time that I formed one of my own insights: it was strange how intelligent people, like Raffles, without being asked, freely spout off their insights and actually expect less intelligent people, like me, to be interested.”

“I’ve always been a word guy, I like weird words and I like American slang and all that and words that are no longer being used… I like to drag them out of the box and wave them around… this is an interesting one, it’s amazing how in addition to punctuation just a little pause in the wrong place can just completely transform the meaning of something.”