How long have we been friends, Dan?" "I wouldn't exactly call it friendship; more a kind of mutual parasitism. - Alastair Reynolds

That was the universe: you could beat it once, you could float a message in a bottle across half of eternity, but the universe would always find a way to have the last laugh.

Is there anyone in Chasm City she hasn't deceived?" "Possibly, somewhere, but only as an extreme theoretical possibility.

But you seem so nonchalant about it all," Teal said.
Merlin pondered this for a few seconds. "Do you think being not nonchalant would make any difference? I don't know that it would. We're here in the moment, aren't we? And the moment will have its way with us, no matter how we feel about things."
"Fatalist."
"Cheerful realist. There's a distinction.