We're all born strangers to ourselves and each other, and we're seldom formally introduced.

We spent a lot of time discussing cosmology first. I think that was your father's unique way of evaluating people. You can tell a lot about a person, he once said, by the way they look at the stars.

When does loyalty become martyrdom?

[There was] only one news channel, overseen by a bland and complexly multicultural board of advisors. It broadcast in fifteen languages and was, as a rule, interesting in none of them.

You never stop being a parent, Adam, no matter how old or wise your child becomes you'll see.

I suppose every decade gets the music it deserves.

Goddamn you," Jacob said. "There's no damnation, Jacob. No Heaven but the forest and no God but the hive.