“How did you . . . pass the time? Sunday asked. You couldnt just ching out of it, could you?We had a different form of chinging, Eunice said. An earlier type of virtual-reality technology, much more...”

“A city's only ever three hot meals away from anarchy.”

“Consider all the inanimate matter in the universe, all the dumb atoms, all the mindless molecules, all the oblivious dust grains and pebbles and rocks and iceballs and worlds and stars, all the unt...”

“Yves Klein said it was the essence of colour itself: the colour that stood for all other colours. A man once spent his entire life searching for a particular shade of blue that he remembered encoun...”

“Making love was a game of echoes. We had shared memories so many times that when I made love to her, I knew exactly how it felt to be Purslane. I could taste and feel her other lovers and she could...”

“Half of all the great art and literature in existence went unrecognised during the lifetimes of its creators.”

“Many individuals are so constituted that their only thought is to obtain pleasure and shun responsibility. They would like, butterfly-like, to wing forever in a summer garden, flitting from flower ...”

“Human beings appear to be sufficiently selfish and calculating to be capable of indefinitely greater harmony and social homeostasis. This statement is not self-contradictory. True selfishness, if o...”

“...only in relatively recent times have people decided that "because I want to" is sufficient reason for annoying others.”

“I see your point. It irks you to see anyone at all who is able to work permitted to live without working. But why do you consider work a virtue?”

“Those who have wisdom have all:Fools with all have nothing.”

“Virtue is harder to be got than knowledge of the world; and, if lost in a young man, is seldom recovered.”