“Frustrated? Of course I'm frustrated! I've spent a year and a half sneaking around trying to avoid all these sodding crabs, and when I finally catch up with my nephew it turns out that he's left the world with a flying ship full of aliens? You'd be frustrated too, thank you very much!”

“And just to and insult to injury – it turns out he's been in contact with 'his uncle' for the past thirteen years! Now, I can say I bloody well wasn't in contact with him – so who the hell was giving him orders? And more to the point, why was he listening to them? Eh? Little sod never listened to me when he was a kid.”

—Mestos Mustikos, a refugee from Ikoss

“They say a lot of things about Vittorio Nascosto – that he was a spy for the Orrins, a spy for Ikoss, a spy for the Bloom… well, come to think of it, mostly all these things involve spying. By all accounts, though, he was exceptionally good at it, and probably made a simply vast amount of money by promising everything to everyone. Sadly, scholars of historic spycraft have very little to go on, primarily because he did such a good job of covering his tracks. Some credit him with the death of Francisco Rolden, and others with numerous assassination attempts on the part of his long-time enemy (and, some say, on-off lover) Monte de Fabio.”

—Excerpt from Ambassadors To Infinity, a biographical account of those Esharians who were closely involved with the Fleet

“Thank you everybody, and welcome to Natterscosto. On today's programme: Baz has been with his partner for six years, but now the babies have started growing tentacles! How can this be? And could the handsome Eshteri who lives next door have anything to do with it? Well, we've got the DNA results, so let's find out…”

—Intro to Episode 112 of Natterscosto, which infamously ended by demonstrating the martial superiority of the octopus

“That was my favourite episode! Well, that or the one where the guy's grandma bought a machine gun on stage took potshots at him while Vittorio laughed. Or the one where the Security SHADEs had to haul the half-Qerrok offstage! Or the one where they spent the whole show trying to decide if she'd pooped in her aunt's fridge! Or the one where…”

—A response to an audience satisfaction survey onboard the Salvation