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

There are certain truths that, in themselves, are as dangerous as any advanced technology.

I'm not a bad man, Ilia. I'm just someone who knows exactly what needs to be done." "Like you said, always the most dangerous sort.