Any aeai [A.I., artificial intelligence ] smart enough to pass a Turin — Ian McDonald

"“Hey!” the people cried in their dreams. “Give us back our ghosts!” for ghosts are as much a part of a community as its plumbing or its library, for how can a community be without its memories?"

"At some point it will inevitably crash again: as weapons of mass destruction go, unrestricted market economies are among the more subtle but sure."

"Nationalism, then Islamism, both twentieth-century inventions, destroyed the Greek civilization in Egypt that had endured for three thousand years."

"He had sworn on his fathers honour, his mothers life, his brothers masculinity, his sisters purity and his prophets beard that he would never set foot there again. God, knowing people, thinks little of honour or purity or even life, but vows made on his prophet he loves to confound."

"That old saw about a problem shared being a problem halved? Damnable lie. A problem shared is a problem doubled."

"The freefall sex? Grossly oversold. Everything moves in all the wrong ways. Things get away from you. You have to strap everything down to get purchase. It’s more like mutual bondage."