Have a little faith in me, Volger." "I have great faith, tempered with vast annoyance.

Maybe this was how you stayed sane in wartime: a handful of noble deeds amid the chaos.

You’d best ask the lady boffin, sir,” Newkirk said. “Midshipmen aren’t allowed to have opinions.

It's not the way Zane looks, David," she said, her voice trembling with anger. "It's because he makes me bubbly, and because we took a lot of risks together. It could just as easily be me lying there, and he would stay with me if it was." "It's just programming!" "No. It's because I love him.

But you weren't born expecting that kind of beauty in everyone, all the time. You just got programmed into thinking anything else is ugly.

Lilt pulled away. "I saw what he was doing, so I cleared a path for him. I helped him do it..." She shook her head, tears tracking the dust off her face, and turned to stare at the fallen tower. "Have we all gone mad to want this?

A rat called Possible New Strain was sitting under a spaghetti strainer held down with a pile of journalism textbooks, saying rude things in rat-speak.