“I want him to be with me because he likes being with me, not because he's forced to be with me or because he wants something from me. That's not how friendship should be." [Ellani]”

“What you humans need to do is find beauty in the fact that something is naturally the way it is. Perhaps then you wouldn't be so destructive." [Meems says to Ellani]”

“I am preprogrammed, acting on impulse, dumping a vast memory into a whirling pool and somehow bringing order to it. Building a complex web. I am the spider. This is my venomous bite. I will make th...”

“From what I can see of humans, you often destroy wonderful things in the pursuit of something that your delusions make you think is more wonderful.”

“We realized that among us, among all the races, we had a staggering fund of knowledge and of techniques - that working together, by putting together all this knowledge and capability, we could arri...”

“It seems to me, Golan, that the advance of civilization is nothing but an exercise in the limiting of privacy.”

“Science fiction at its best should be crazy and dangerous, not sane and safe.”