“No one lived forever. But you fought for every minute you could get. Bought a little more with a lot of hard work.”

“All of nature was a record of crisis and destruction and adaptation and flourishing and being knocked back down again. What had happened on New Terra was singular and concrete, but the pattern it w...”

“The usual state of nature is recovering from the last disaster.”

“In the artifacts that are conscious, memories of vanished lives still flicker. Tissues that were changed without dying hold the moment that a boy heard his sister was leaving home. They hold multip...”

“He is, however, Amos continued, keeping a constant rail gun lock on the Israels reactor.Holden ran his fingers through his hair. So not too generous, then.Say pretty please, but carry a one-kilo sl...”

“His strike force stood around him, craning their necks, in awe of the massive emptiness all around. He was almost sorry to pull his attention back to the small, vaguely intimate necessities of viol...”

“A few generations living and dying without a sky, and enclosed spaces lost the atavistic terror of premature burial.”

“My tomb shall be in a spot where the north wind may scatter roses over it.”

“Elaborate burial customs are a sure sign of decadence.”

“O Earth, lie heavily upon her eyes;Seal her sweet eyes weary of watching Earth;Lie close around her; leave no room for mirthWith its harsh laughter, nor for sound of sighs.She hath no questions, sh...”

“Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of wi...”

“My dear,Find what you love and let it kill you.Let it drain you of your all. Let it cling onto your back and weigh you down into eventual nothingness.Let it kill you and let it devour your remains....”

“If you gave someone your heart and they died, did they take it with them? Did you spend the rest of forever with a hole inside you that couldn't be filled?”