"No brochure would have shown the nightmare bulk of the pontoon-mounted strata machine, the small model for islands and atolls under fifteen kilometers. As Kin watched, another metre of beach spilled out of the big back hopper." Pg. 1

"Twenty-one decades lie on her shoulders like temporal dandruff. She carries them lightly. Why not? People were never meant to grow old. Memory surgery helped." Pg. 6

"It was better to send a man into space than a machine. In the complete unknown, a man could still evaluate and decide. Machines were fine for routine, but they flipped when presented with the unforeseen.
It was cheap to send a machine because it did not breathe and it sent its information back alone.
Whereas a man breathed, all the time. This was expensive.
But it was very cheap to send a man if you did not arrange to bring him back." Pg...