Normally Connor would walk away from a conversation like this. His life is about tangibles: things you can see, hear and touch. God, souls, and all that has always been like a secret in a black box he couldn't see into, so it was easier just to leave it alone. Only now, he's inside the black box.

Cities are never random. No matter how chaotic they might seem, everything about them grows out of a need to solve a problem

Either things happen for a reason, or they happen for no reason at all. Either one's life is a thread in a glorious tapestry or humanity is just a hopelessly tangled knot.

Your hair looks funny," Lief said, as soon as the Ugloids left. "It stands straight up!" No," said Nick, intensely irritated, "It's hanging straight down." Lief just gave him an upside-down shrug. "Up is down in China and you're part-Chinese.

No true hero ever believes that they are one.

Suddenly it was obvious to Connor why they don't teach it. Once education was restructured and corporatized, they didn't want kids knowing how close they came to toppling the government. They didn't want kids to know how much power they really had.

The living would come up with endless theories to argue, because the living were exceptionally good at arguing, especially when no one knew the answer.