“Like most Englishmen, he felt something strongly, and proceeded to muddle around until he had, somehow or other, cleared up the mess.”

“Perhaps he could organize everyone. He could stand up on something and shout slogans until he had attracted enough attention. Then he could begin some rambling speech, hoping that the people around him would be so desperate for leadership they wouldn’t notice the absurdity of what he said.”

“Piglet looked up, and looked away again. And he felt so Foolish and Uncomfortable that he had almost decided to run away to Sea and be a Sailor, when suddenly he saw something.”

“He had never felt entirely comfortable around Raphael. Raphael seemed to him like Loki or some other trickster God, sometimes working for good and sometimes for evil, but always in his own interests.”

“Blunt nodded slowly, like an old man. It was not clear whether he had understood and was agreeing, or whether he had given up the attempt to understand and was merely being agreeable.”

“What was it like, he wondered, to care about something so passionately? He suspected it made her somehow more alive than he was.”

“The stick-on holograms had actually had some effect on Bobby, because religion was now something he felt he’d considered and put aside. Basically, the way he figured it, there were just some people around who needed that shit, and he guessed there always had been, but he wasn’t one of them, so he didn’t.”

“Now that the real and the imagined had collided, he wondered if she, like he, longed for the past, for the normal. He wondered if normalcy was something, like vision or silence, you didn't realize was precious until you lost it.”

“Do I look like a mess?” she asked.
He nodded. “But you’re my mess,” he whispered.”

“Smith was being realistic-if you give people something before they are ready [for it] they are going to mess it up. And that has happened. If he had had the opportunity to work with the people [and] help bring them up, Zimbabwe would be a better place now. Smith did make it better during his government. There is no reason why he could not do that if he had been allowed to go on.”