“Stock was a rationalist and an atheist. Most of the time she saw the world as a big machine where things just played themselves out. Anonymous forces, impersonal powers, action and reaction, cause ...”

“Pritchard tutted. "Justice? Justice is even more problematic than truth. It's an emergent property of a very complicated system.”

“Nothing goes on forever. If it did, there wouldn't be anything else, would there?”

“Holy fuck,' Corcoran said, leaning back against the wall. 'I am going home and drinking a whole bottle of Bacardi. Someone can pour the Coke into me after I pass out.”

“The sight of a worm excites my reverence more than all the gods men have invented.”

“For the natural polytheist, whose gods arise in and from the natural material world ... Our gods not only have transcendent eyes and metaphysical hands. They have antlers and feathers, hooves and s...”

“I sing to you of many more gods, gods of wind and water, gods of each mineral and the events that created them. I sing to you of the gods of protons, of quarks, of atomic forces binding and holding...”