Authority. The antithesis of science.

The past is a distraction, a source of envy, enmity, bitterness. Only the present matters, for only in the present can we shape the future. Cut loose the past; it is dead weight. Let the Extirpation continue. Let it never end.

We seem to be young, in a very old Galaxy. We're like kids tiptoeing through a ruined mansion.

The Long Earth is bountiful but not forgiving.

When you realize that you are an eternal being, you will laugh at things that used to give you anxiety attacks.

Imagine God inside your computer, your phone, everyone else's computer. Imagine someone who almost is the Black Corporation, with all its power and riches and reach. And who, despite all this, seems pretty sane and beneficent by the standards of most gods. Oh, and who sometimes swears in Tibetan.

In the Vortex that lies beyond time and space tumbled a police box that was not a police box.