“We’re going to have a séance. Oren, open the whisky, if you would, and pour each of us a full glass.” “First sensible remark all night,” said Charlo… - Tim Powers

When my mother told me the meek would inherit the earth, I told her all I wanted of it was the shovelful that would cover my cold face.

When they’d gone the old man turned around to watch the sun’s slow descent. The Boat of Millions of Years, he thought; the boat of the dying sungod Ra, tacking down the western sky to the source of the dark river that runs through the underworld from west to east, through the twelve hours of the night, at the far eastern end of which the boat will tomorrow reappear, bearing a once again youthful, newly reignited sun.
Or, he thought bitterly, removed from us by a distance the universe shouldn’t even be able to encompass, it’s a vast motionless globe of burning gas, around which this little ball of a planet rolls like a pellet of dung propelled by a kephera beetle. Take your pick, he told himself as he started slowly down the hill...But be willing to die for your choice.

Banach recalled that one defector had stated, I didn’t abandon the USSR, the USSR abandoned me.
And he recalled the oath he had taken, with perfect sincerity, at the age of eighteen: I will always be ready to come to the defense of my homeland, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics…
The what? he thought now. What was that you said? The Roman Empire, was it? The Persian Empire, the Hittites?