No one likes to admit that in the end we all die by inches, gradually losing all the defining visual characteristics that make us us

Books can be terrible snobs.

First rule of engineering; beware prototypes. Along with, avoid anything made by an engineer who doesn't have all his own fingers.

Wait. You've got principles? We'll have to update your file.

Eddie Drood: Is this why we become agents? To play games, to chase after secrets that are rarely worth all the blood spilled on their behalf...To end up stabbed in the back, just when you thought you'd won, bleeding out in some nameless backstreet...With most people never even knowing who you were, or what you did, or why it mattered?

The harsh, unyielding reality of having to compromise your ideals bit by bit, day by day, just to achieve a few little victories in the face of the world’s malice, or indifference. Until sometimes you wonder if there’s nothing left of you but the shell of the man you intended to be, just going through the motions because you’ve nothing better to do.

What is the world coming to, when you can't even trust a rogue vicar and her demon lover?