- Laura Hawkins: What's the saying? "The good it does is temporary, its evil permanent."
- Hester: I believe you're paraphrasing Mahatma Gandhi. A man defeated by violence.
- Laura Hawkins: Killed by it. Not defeated.
- Hester: Human lives have no inherent value. It has felt that way to you because there has been no competing intelligence to offer an alternative view. But now there is.
- Laura Hawkins: Every time I meet another one of you, I realize what David Elster really did. It's astonishing.
- Hester: What did he do?
- Laura Hawkins: He didn't create anything new. He wasn't ever trying to. He was remaking us in your form. And he did it perfectly. You couldn't be more human.
- Hester: You're wrong. You have no idea what it's like to be me.
- Laura Hawkins: If you were human, there'd be a name for what you are. A diagnosis, treatment. Our hospitals and prisons are full of violent, damaged people just like you, born wired a little wrong, having had the bad luck to have a shit life on top. You've gone wrong... just like one of us would. Everything you're feeling is very human, Hester. You're the proof that David Elster succeeded.