"Individually speaking, death is always a rupture, a violence. But taking a total view, death is the bell curve upon which the cosmos is balanced. Without it, nothing would work, everything would collapse, clogged and stagnant. Death is flow. It is the necessary lubrication of universal motion. It is, in itself, neither praiseworthy nor blameworthy."

“It had to be one or the other. Did it have to be one or the other? Even the question as to whether it had to be one or the other had to be one or the other!”

““I shouldn’t be naive” Diana said. “Of course, realising its destructive power only makes them want it more. Of course. Even more than great wealth, power craves technologies of destruction. Good to be wealthy, but better to remain in power—and the more awe-inspiring the weaponry at your disposal, the better able you are to do that.”

““I avoid all political complications,” said Cloche, with a severe expression. “Of whatever stripe. I only wish that political complications would similarly avoid me, and my work.”

“Let us not entirely abandon Occam’s Razor! The possible, no matter how unlikely, is always to be preferred to the impossible, however appealing.”

“One of the curiosities of anger, of course, is that the more you focus it outward, firing it at the injustices of the world, the more it actually parses your own self-pity and resentment.”

“Jack considered: there were worse things that could happen than him dying. Of course, there were much better things, too.”