"That's what my team and I do. We find an impossible situation against an enemy that holds all the cards and cannot possibly ever be defeated. Then we figure out a way to defeat them.
"Don't ask for a singularity bomb.
"Ask for our help."
— Doctor Menlo
"Honestly... With the things that happened to Sig, to Strike, to Mezlisa, to dean Carroll, to Mary, to Renko, to Yaraghiya... I think having a non-hellish background kinda makes me a minority around here."
"Technology is what raises us above beasts! It gives us civilization! It feeds us, keeps us warm in winter, gives us light to read at night! It kills our diseases, allows us to communicate, to discover the world! And how the helling hell are we supposed to fight against shadow monsters without technology?! What, is Purity forbidding tech just to keep everyone desperately dependent on his BULLSHIT?!"
— Doctor Menlo, upon learning about Purity's Evil Luddite ways.
"George Li realized he could make a lot more money as a CEO than he ever could as a supervillain. Dexter Darien realized that being a supervillain was a great marketing gimmick for a CEO."
Luis: "So, is this a curse? I mean, do I need to call a witch? Because, I know a witch. She's extremely reliable."
Roan: "Curses generally don't make you change your clothes like that. Cerulean's just presenting as more feminine."
Luis: "Well, I just asked. I mean, if this happened at home, 'some sort of gender swap curse' would be my first guess, so-"
Roan: "That'd be a sex change, not a gender swap. Gender is your presentation and mental state-"
Luis: "Wait, then wouldn't a gender swap curse be what makes you wear a dress even if you don't want to?"
Roan: "I concede the point."
"This is Dean Alicia Carroll from Pinnacle Academy. I have called to present you with a binary choice. You can connect me to Mister Porter, or I can eat your babies. Yes, I'm willing to hold."
Mezlisa: "... Lemme tell you something, as an immortal.
"If you abandon everything you stand for just for immortality? You have lost in a way far, far darker than anything you can imagine.
"And what Kilgrave's having you do to attain it? Won't make you heroes who can prevent death. It'll just make you SHOCKER with different hats on.
"Are you a hero, right now, taking a risk that you make an already messed up world even worse? Or have you just fallen and not even noticed?"
Ranger Clay: "...But... the people who relied on me..."
Mezlisa: "They would hate what you're letting yourself become.
"They're relying on you to honor their memory. This is not honoring their memory.
"His plan required Sumire Izuno's death. And it required it badly enough that he stranded you here - the portal to your world's destroyed - to do it. His plan, or so he claims, ends with immortality for the Ranger Corps - though honestly, I doubt it's real, because the ways I know it to be possible... I want to hope he hasn't gone that dark.
"Please... Tell us what you know. It might be the only way to save your world from a fate so much worse than anything you can imagine.
"From becoming where I came from."
"You're insane."
Alicia: "Oh, I'm afraid it was the judge's opinion that I was quite competent to stand trial."
Luis: "Were! Wolf! Half monkey, half wolf! If we wanted giant wolves, we would have made giant wolves! We can do that! We already did that! So we made monkey-wolves."
Roan: "Were means man!"
Luis: "What is a man? You're the one from the world with a theory of evolution! You should know this!"
"It's simply something I made that removes every longing feeling, bit of emotional resonance, or determined promise - these are all terms of art in my language, don't translate very well under the spell, but anything you'd regard as important, really - that Alicia Carroll has for Erin Celeste, irreversibly and permanently. Then it transplants all of those things that shape her personality and causes her to feel exactly the way she used to about Erin about a rusty, thirteen-year-old freighter scow currently on the Iowa River."
"Because. It's a cargo ship."
"Get it?"
—Professor Izuno
"You can't frighten me, ninja woman. I work at a Denny's. I've seen things you couldn't possibly comprehend."
"You're three geopolitical upheavals behind."
Caylor Azure: "Oh, please. Like you've never rescued someone at gunpoint into the trunk of a car before."
Alicia Carroll: "When I have to."
"Why do you need to write a complicated story where there's a completely ethical explanation for why you're doing the thing that you want to do? We're two adults who know how the world works. You don't need a reason."
— Strike, at the start of Mezlisa unleashing her powers to control Strike's body and basically force her to defeat herself.
"I mean I've seen you angry. You couldn't hold on thirty seconds before you were trying to use my powers to save people instead of hurting me. ... Mez, the reason you stress out so much about this is because you're not evil, but you're so scared of the possibility that you keep convincing yourself you might be. Please. Just listen to me. You're not. Anyone on the team'd laugh at the idea. You care too much about other people to actually do that kind of thing.
A depowered Strike, a few days after the previous quote.
