And You Can Quote Me: Rock 'n' Roll; Tom Stoppard

Max: ...I'm down to one belief, that between theory and practice there's a decent fit — not perfect but decent: ideology and a sensible fair society, it's my double helix and I won't be talked out of it or done out of it or shamed out of it. We just have to be better. (pg. 22)

Interrogator: ... You're not clever, you're simple. And if you're not simple you're complicated. We're supposed to know what's going on inside people. That's why it's the Ministry of the Interior. Are you simple or complicated? Have a biscuit. (pg. 27)

Jan: ..last year, they lost their license — undesirable elements, you know. . .

Max: Undesirable how?

Jan: Their songs are morbid, they dress weird, they look like their on drugs, and one time they sacrificed a chicken on stage, but otherwise it's a mystery. (pg. 33)

Jan: If I were English I wouldn't care if Communism in Czechoslovakia reformed itself into a pile of pig shit. To be English would be my luck. I would be moderately enthusiastic and moderately philistine, and a good sport. I would be kind to foreigners in a moderately superior way and also to animals except the ones I kill, ad I would live a decent life, like most English people, and behave decently in the English way. (pg. 38)

Lenka: What you like about brains, Max, is that they all work in the same way. What you don't like about minds is that they don't. (pg. 58)

Esme: ...Is this all where we're going if we're lucky? A windy corner by a supermarket, with a plastic bag on the handlebars full of, I don't know, ready-meals and loo paper. . .lumpy faces and thickening bodies in forgettable clothes, going home with the shopping? But we were all beautiful then, blazing with beauty... (pg. 70)

Jan: ..We have an arrangement with ourselves not to disturb the appearances. We aim for inertia. We mass-produce banality. (pg. 82)

Jan: ?! (pg. 107)