Science is so powerful that it drags us kicking and screaming towards the truth despite our best efforts to avoid it.

What's the difference between being dead, and just not knowing you're alive?

Humans didn't really fight over skin tone or ideology; those were just handy cues for kin-selection purposes. Ultimately it always came down to bloodlines and limited resources.

Are you kidding? That's the music of the spheres, commissar. It's beautiful. Like old jazz.

You are. I'm just fatalistically cheerful. We all come into the story halfway through, we all catch up as best we can, and we're all gonna die before it ends.

I really wanted to talk to her. I just couldn't find an algorithm that fit.

I am the bridge between the bleeding edge and the dead center. I stand between the Wizard of Oz and the man behind the curtain. I am the curtain.