You worry that we're becoming monsters. Merlin, we already were monsters. You didn't make us any worse.

I think I've reduced the amount of blood in my caffeine system to an acceptable level.

To see something marvelous with your own eyes-that's wonderful enough. But when two of you see it, two of you together, holding hands, holding each other close, knowing that you'll both have that memory for the rest of your lives, but that each of you will only ever hold only have an incomplete half of it, and that it won't ever really exist as a whole until you're together, talking or thinking about that moment ...that's worth more than one plus one. It's worth four, or eight, or some number so large we can't even imagine it.

You worry that we're becoming monsters. Merlin, we already were monsters. You didn't make us any worse.

Nightside, cities glistened in chains, and a spray of tinkertoy habitats girdled the planet. Gossamer starbridges reached from the equator towards orbit.

As the old saying went, the Manhattan Project wasn't built in a day. Or was that Rome? Something to do with Earth, anyway.

Autocratic governments are masters of self-contradiction. They say one thing, do another.