Stephen Baxter

"It’s all a bit anarchic, I suppose, but it’s also highly effective. Flexible, responsive, mobile, heuristic, with intelligence distributed to the lowest level...A bit like an ideal human society, I suppose; free individuals seeking out ways to advance the common good."

"Maybe it’s time we humans abandoned our species-specific chauvinism—our petty outrage that the Universe has unfolded in a way that doesn’t suit us."

"The last of the Qax had come sliding through the interstices of space and now hovered with him over the frigid surface of the star. Human and Qax, huddled around the chill proton star, did not attempt to communicate. There was nothing more to say. The river of time flowed, unmarked, towards the endless seas of timelike infinity."

"Mind you, flatulence was one skill he had bettered as he had got older."

"I’ve made myself a rich man. You shouldn’t assume that makes me a fool."

"Bzya touched his shoulder. “But that’s why you and I are here, old man. To keep the world away from boys like Farr and Cris—to give them a place that seems as stable and eternal as your parents did when you were a child—until they are old enough to cope with the truth.”"

"The river of time flowed unmarked, towards the endless seas of timelike infinity."

"Like all the works of man, I saw, even these great structures were transient chimeras, destined to impermanence compared to the chthonian patience of the land."

"I have always been distrustful of personal power—for I have met not one man wise enough to be entrusted with it."

"Cause and Effect, when Time Machines are about, are rather awkward concepts."

"It was a striking demonstration of how geomorphology, the shape of the landscape, dominates human geography."

"The secret of a Scientist is not what he knows. It’s what he asks."