1) '''Gee,' the girl said, awed. 'Is that really true? That he had one of those on him that day?'
'Sure. And I know which it is. You see my point. It's all a big racket; they're playing it on themselves. I mean, a gun goes through a famous battle, like the Meuse-Argonne, and it's the same as if it hadn't, unless you know. It's in here.' He tapped his head. 'In the mind, not the gun.'''

2) ''No doubt about it, he thought as he hung up the phone. The Colt .44 affair had shaken him considerably. He no longer viewed his stock with the same reverence. Bit of knowledge like that goes a long way. Akin to primal childhood awakening; facts of life. Shows, he ruminated, the link with our early years: not merely U.S. history involved, but our own personal. As if, he thought, question might arise as to authenticity of our birth certificate. Or our impression of Dad.''

3) '''Don't undervaluate the possibility suggested by the esteemed importer. He is a shrewd personage. You and I---we have no awareness of the vast number of uneducated. They can obtain from mold-produced identical objects a joy which would be denied to us. We must suppose that we have the only one of a kind, or at least something rare, possessed by a very few. And of course, something truly authentic. Not a model or replica.' He continued to gaze past Childan, at empty space. 'Not something cast by the tens of thousands.'''

4) ''In any case the war, Operation Dandelion, will sweep us all away. No matter what we are doing at the time. Our enemy, alongside whom we fought in the last war. What good did it do us? We should have fought them, possibly. Or permitted them to lose, assisted their enemies, the United States, Britain, Russia.
Hopeless wherever one looks.
The oracle enigmatic. Perhaps it has withdrawn from the world of man in sorrow. The sages leaving.''