“on the voyage he had established his distinction from the other marines. He must continue as he had begun.” p.63

“waiting for his vocation to become possible.” 

“a man was obliged to become part of the mighty military machine.”

“to bend to the King’s will required the suspension of a human response. A man was obliged to become part of the mighty military machine.” p.29

"No one ...would ever forget what happend to those who did not serve and obey" p.29

“he was cordial, amusing and easy, always in the right place with just the right words.” 

“model of how it was done.”  

“for the first time in his life, that he was in the right place.” 

special numbers, ...they are solitaries.

“being out of step with the world.” p.5

“take his place in the furthest and most dimly lit corner of the room.”p.83

“there is nowhere in the world that I would rather be.”

“astronomy would make a convenient screen for a self that he did not choose to share with any of the other soles marooned with him.”

“looked a little shifty” and that he was “a man with a sharp assessment of where his own interests lay.”

“he should be sorry for it now, that choice he had made forty-six years ago” but once he “[tries] the idea out in his mind…he did not seem to be feeling regret”.

“careworm” 

“we have got to get you that comet. Otherwise the governor will have you close up shop there.” 

“it would never again be the first time. Rooke was aware of witnessing something unrepeatable and irreversible. He was watching one universe in the act of encountering another”. 

For Rooke, “difference [holds] no fear” and “strangeness [is] commonplace when you [inhabit] it”.

“everything in his life had been leading here”.

“old enough to want to look into another’s eyes, one human to another, and still young enough to be fearless”. 

“only human in the world who trusted him to be able to laugh at himself”.

“...language is more than a list of words...Language [is] a machine".  p.152

“far beyond vocabulary or grammatical forms” 

“the heart of talking” and “the way in which two people had found common ground and begun to discover the true names of things.” 

“longing to protect, and an imperative to stand aside” 

“to take food when it available is … a correct response to hunger”. 

“they was coming for me, they had the spears and the cudgels, I felt my life to be in danger, sir…I fired among the thick of them.”

“if you were part of such an act, you were part of its wrong … if you were part of that machine, you were part of its evil” p.280

“it was by far the most unpleasant service I was ever ordered to execute” p.112

“I wish to God I had not done it! He should not have given the order, but I wish to God I had not obeyed” p.113

"Yes, we are all servants of the governor here and the Devil take any man who says different!" p.113

“As he [Rooke] pulled his finger back against the trigger and braced himself for the noise, he had a moment's nausea. …he would be happy if today…was the last day he ever fired it.” p.60

“Large, male, a stranger, and clad in incomprehensible coverings…” p.159

“And Rooke had been part of it. He had not cried out with horror or rushed forward to put an end to it. He had looked away when Warungin called to him” p.198

“He had made that choice, because he was a lieutenant in Her Majesty’s Marine Force … If he was a soldier, he was as much a part of the cruelty as the man who had wielded the whip” p.199

“Being reminded that he was a soldier, a man who had sworn to serve and obey, was like forcing open a rusted hinge” p.244

“this is not a request, it is an order” p.246

“when they told him that he might continue in the service, on the conditions that he apologise .. He refused” p.291

"Rank: in a remote way he knew it mattered, but now it seemed bloodless and irrelevant” p.168 

“ Whether it was because he was stupid or clever, it added up to the same thing: the misery of being out of step with the world” p.5

he had no evidence, but doggedly believed that there would one day be a place, somewhere in the world, for the person he was” p.15

“the solitude without matched the solitude within” p.69 

-_{"emptiness matched his own" p.10}

“eyes on next prize”  p.22

“You did not learn a language without entering into a relationship with the people who spoke it with you” p.233 

"By God they are savage…dirty too, look at the filth on them." (p. 139)

“he was vastly entertained by some idea” (p.272)

"By Jove, Rooke, I can see that we will get on famously"

"He was cordial, amusing and easy, always in the right place with just the right words."

"…a storyteller who could turn the most commonplace event into something entertaining. "

"With Silk beside him as a model of how it was done, Rooke worked at inventing an acceptable version of himself…"

"You could think of it as a piece of theatre , Rooke, if you wished."

“do him no harm, men” Silk shouted…. He is coming to us in trust, it is no part of our intention to betray trust, only to punish” p.266

"stop and comb his fingers through the tails of the whip after each lash to clear the flesh that clogged them"

"turn his back on the man he had become"

"step back into the void"