This was unrecorded history, unhappening even as it happened. - Robert Charles Wilson

We spent a lot of time discussing cosmology first. I think that was your father’s unique way of evaluating people. You can tell a lot about a person, he once said, by the way they look at the stars.

I would confront the thieves, I thought, and the self-evident justice of my case would cause them to crumble before me. I don't know why I expected such extravagant results from the application of mere justice. That kind of calculation is seldom borne out by worldly events.

Baumgartner's coke habit isn't the secret she thinks it is, and it gives us leverage."
"Coke?"
"Coke, yeah, you know: cocaine. When she powders her nose, she literally powders her nose.