"What’s the point of history, if it has nothing to say to the present?"

“Gritter thought it was about time the complacent louts at the top of the heap got to have a genuine red-hot poker up the ass.”

“It is the rare person who can stand aside and observe that our minds and identities are largely constructs of our social order, that we are abstract and arbitrary collections of ideas that resemble dusty archives in the galleries of a museum, visited by nobody, and maintained by a series of those insensible robots that are our habits.”

“On the other hand...why was there always an “other hand”?”

“You could try and breed territoriality out of the bone, but like a bad fairy it popped up again and again in all sorts of guises and from all kinds of DNA. As long as there was plenty, then everyone was happy to pay culture its due, but as soon as there was trouble—bang, out came the demonization memes and, lo and behold, they were back to the Dark Ages faster than you could say “mattock.”

“Delirium, dream, death—Three-D. What was the fourth?”

““So, you’re saying you have no idea what this stuff is.” At last, something that sounded plausible.”