“Maybe it’s not as bad as she fears. Old people always think the world is going to ruin. It’s their job.” “Maybe they’re right,” Floyd replied. - Alastair Reynolds

She rapped on for a while about how the nineties milieu was best addressed as a system of infections: sexual illnesses, rogue advertising slogans, computer viruses, proliferating junk mail…the kind of jive that had spread into all the glossy style magazines, as if, she mused, the viral paradigm was a metavirus in its own right.

I imagine you feel insignificant," Sajaki said, almost as if he had been listening in on the conversation. "Well; you're justified in feeling that way. You are insignificant. That's the majesty of this place. Would you choose it any other way?

Rashmika could tell when anyone around her was lying. But seeing through her own deceptions was another matter entirely.