“So I guess you could say Neel owes me a few favors, except that so many favors have passed between us now that they are no longer distinguishable as individual acts, just a bright haze of loyalty. ...”

“Neel cuts in: "Where'd you grow up?""Palo Alto," she says. From there to Stanford to Google: for a girl obsessed with the outer limits of human potential, Kat has stayed pretty close to home. Neel ...”

“It was tall, made of pale blue light, a creature with long arms and long legs and the shadow of a smile, and above it all, eyes that shone bluer still than its body. "What do you seek in this place...”

“America pays defense contractors to build aircraft carriers. Google pays brilliant programmers to do whatever the hell they want.”

“Walking the stacks in a library, dragging your fingers across the spines -- it's hard not to feel the presence of sleeping spirits.”

“After that, the book will fade, the way all books fade in your mind. But I hope you will remember this:A man walking fast down a dark lonely street. Quick steps and hard breathing, all wonder and n...”

“The self is...a creation, the principal work of your life, the crafting of which makes everyone an artist. This unfinished work of becoming ends only when you do, if then, and the consequences live...”

“Makers?" said Toby. Jaysir nodded."We're not loners, you know. There just weren't any on Wallop. We love to get together, we just refuse to engage in social relations that are based on material ine...”

“Reality is a background so painted over by our own perceptions that every eye sees the world differently.”

“It's not how I take tragic news but how I make tragic views that unscrews me.”

“What is different is not necessarily dangerous, and what is similar is not always secure.”