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1 " Just because the world often seemed to reward ugliness was no excuse to give up on beauty. "
― Kathryn Davis , Duplex
2 " The world had edges but you couldn’t see them going, only when you were trying to come back. "
3 " There was a worm addicted to grape leaves, she continued, and suddenly it woke up. Call it a miracle, whatever, something woke it up and it wasn’t a worm anymore. It was the whole vineyard, and the orchard too, the fruit, the trunks, an ever-expanding joy that didn’t need to devour anything. "
4 " ...the beginning and the end of time. These are the same thing, as everybody knows who came into this universe via a wormhole. "
5 " A girl in a crown of stars was coming toward him, but before she could see who he was he slipped through his curtains of flesh. "
6 " Apes or human – we all made the same mistake, tempted by shifting leaves or the smell of sex, by music or a ripe banana. "
7 " The irony was not lost on any of us that despite the theme there was a robot on the throne. "
8 " It isn’t time that folds, it’s space. "
9 " According to the prophecy a child was going to come along that would be part human and part robot and this child was going to change everything. Of course it was way too soon – both sides were totally unprepared, not to mention the fact that they had their parts mixed up. The girls were only interested in romance, and the robots in completing a transaction. "
10 " Think of them like gods, Janice said, because that’s what they are. The nape of a human neck is especially easy to see through – that’s why they love it when we bow our heads. It doesn’t have anything to do with praying. Prayers bore them. "
11 " Everybody thinks it’s going to be different for them, Janice said. The dinosaurs thought so too. "
12 " The proximity of Mary filled him with excitement; he had to work to slow his breathing. A drop, another drop – he was flicking his penis dry. It grew long and thin, the corona pointed and cleft like a hoof. "
13 " It was cool, his finger, being made of titanium, and he used it to stroke her, first on the outside, running it over her pubic hair until she began to moan, and then sliding it inside her. "
14 " I’ve heard the band is supposed to be out of this world,” Miss Vicks was saying. "
15 " The crickets were rubbing their hind legs together, unrolling that endless band of sound that when combined with the sound of the sycamore trees losing their heads in the heat-thickened breeze could cause even a girl as unsentimental as Mary to feel like she’d just left something behind on the porch stoop she couldn’t bear to live without. "
16 " The Yellow Bear made its first appearance bobbing around on the swollen waters after the Great Flood, following which it disappeared for a while. It tended to show up in periods of unusual stress or upheaval. Even though it looked like it had been made in a factory by unskilled labourers, it had been forged in the Cradle of Civilisation and was said to be the product of a collaboration between humans and machines, lending some credence to the belief that machines had been on the planet long before humans were capable of making them. "
17 " The most important thing to remember is that a duplex’s properties are stretchable but they aren’t infinite. One minute the opening will be right there in front of you, and the next minute you won’t even know where it went. "
18 " Some people think what you’re supposed to do in life is fill yourself up with loads of things like names, the more the better. But that’s not how it works. "
19 " This is because the Greeks had it backward, and no matter how hard humans try thinking otherwise, they still think like Greeks. For the Greeks, when you looked ahead all you saw was the past. It was like the past was the future. "
20 " She tried to hear his heartbeat through the fabric of his tuxedo jacket, and the fact that she wasn't sure whether she could hear it made her think about how hard it was for any girl to ever know whether her love was being returned. "