“One fail-safe after another had let them down. Helped by the ionospheric storm, the sheer perversity of inanimate things struck again.”

“Life is a process--just one thing after another. When you lose it, just start again.”

“The storm had now definitely abated, and what thunder there was now grumbled over more distant hills, like a man saying 'And another thing…' twenty minutes after admitting he'd lost the argument.”

“To dwell on the things that depress or anger us does not help in overcoming them. One must knock them down alone.”

“The main thing that endears the United Nations to member governments, and so enables it to survive, is its proven capacity to fail, and to be seen to fail. If there is something you are expected to do, but don't want to do, or even have done for you, you can safely appeal to the UN in the comfortable certainty that it will let you down.”

“Our earthly possessions will indeed perish in the final wreck of all things; but let the ship perish, let all we have sink in the deep, if we may come "safe to land." From these storms and billows — these dangerous seas — these tempestuous voyages — may we all be brought at last, safe to heaven.”

“It was one thing to use computers as a tool, quite another to let them do your thinking for you.”

“In another moment down went Alice after it, never once considering how in the world she was to get out again.”

“All the things that happen and seem so important at the time, and yet you forget them, one after another.”

“The Thing of the idols, the green, sticky spawn of the stars, had awaked to claim his own. The stars were right again, and what an age-old cult had failed to do by design, a band of innocent sailors had done by accident. After vigintillions of years great Cthulhu was loose again, and ravening for delight.”