We yearned for the future. How did we learn it, that talent for insatiability?

One of the gravestones in the cemetery near the earliest church has an anchor on it and an hourglass, and the words In Hope.In Hope. Why did they put that above a dead person? Was it the corpse hoping, or those still alive?

...we must be a beacon of hope, because if you tell people there's nothing they can do, they will do worse than nothing.

As a species we're doomed by hope, then?You could call it hope. That, or desperation.But we're doomed without hope, as well, said Jimmy.Only as individuals, said Crake cheerfully.

We have learned to see the world in gasps.

It is better to hope than to mope!