“There was definitely something sticking out of the iceberg. It looked almost like… a submarine. But it couldn’t be.”
In the prologue, Karl Selig and his associates have traveled to Antarctica in search of research material for a doctoral thesis on icebergs, but they have accidentally discovered what appears to be a submarine in the ice. When they leave the boat to investigate, they discover a giant underground cathedral with strange markings before the ravine swallows them. This quote epitomizes the skeptical disbelief the characters of the novel have to deal with and disregard when uncovering the Immari conspiracy. The tendency is to disbelieve, but the fate of the world rests on their belief.
"Here’s a tip. The good guys ask you to get in the truck. The bad guys put a black bag over your head and throw you in the truck. I’m asking."
This quote from David, spoken when he first meets Dr. Warner, represents the novel's clear-cut ideas of good and evil. The conflict of this novel could be easily categorized in the traditional good vs evil way, and this naïvely simple quote proves it. In David's mind, there are good guys and bad guys, and each is obviously detectable, an ironic position for an ex-military mercenary to hold.
“Science lacks something very important that religion provides: a moral code. Survival of the fittest is a scientific fact, but it is a cruel ethic; the way of beasts, not a civilized society. Laws can only take us so far, and they must be based upon something — a shared moral code that rises from something. As that moral foundation recedes, so will society’s values.”
Qian is the last of the Immaru, the religious order from which the Immari broke off and created their own order based on science. In this quote, Qian is explaining the terrible effects the abandonment of their religious principles in exchange for scientific materialism had on the Immari: they lost their moral foundation, regressing to a "survival of the fittest" code of ethics. This profound truth explains the nature of the Immari, and the reader has a better idea of the ideals and motivations.
