"The mountains dwindled away into hills covered with a dark, stunted scrub. Beyond them the land flattened out to the horizon, a treeless immensity of white and gray-green, a spongy mossiness flecked with a million icy ponds. The wind blew, sometimes hard, sometimes harder."

“Invisibility is a condition of godhead. If folk could see them, they would know the truth, and the Lords Protector would cease to be divine.”

“With any luck. Stark smiled cynically. Not that he did not believe in luck. Rather, he had found it to be an uncertain ally.”

“There was a smell in the air now. The hot, close, frightening small of mob; mob excited, hungry, dreaming blood and death. The primitive in Stark knew that sweaty acridity all too well.”

“I can’t tell you if the stories are true. Men lie without meaning to. They talk as if they had been part of a thing that happened to someone they never knew and only heard of by sixth remove.”

“Stark said wearily, “I don’t think you understand.” Normally he was tolerant of tribal fancies, but he felt no great tenderness for the Outdwellers. “The stars are already defiled. They’re only suns, like that one over your head. They have worlds around them, like this one under your feet. People live on those worlds, people who never heard of Outdwellers or their footling goddess. And the starships fly between them. It’s all going on out there, this second as you stand here, and nothing you can do will stop it.”

““Better to make haste slowly than not at all,” said Amnir sententiously.”