While in a vintage restaurant..."the past isn't quaint while you're in it. Only at a safe distance, later, when you see it as decor, not as the shape your life's been squeezed into.

You can’t buy it, but it has a price,” said Oryx. “Everything has a price.

They seemed to be able to choose. We seemed to be able to choose, then. We were a society dying of too much choice.

Reading ... changes you. You aren't the same person after you've read a particular book as you were before, and you will read the next book, unless both are Harlequin Romances, in a slightly different way.

The only way you can write the truth is to assume that what you set down will never be read.

That was when they suspended the Constitution. They said it would be temporary. There wasn't even any rioting in the streets. People stayed home at night, watching television, looking for some direction. There wasn't even an enemy you could put your finger on.

What you get is no longer what you see.