JOI's father's garage monologue (p. 160)
Today, Lesson One out there, you become, for better or worse, Jim, a man. A player. A body in commerce with bodies. A helmsman at your own vessel’s tiller. A machine in the ghost, to quote a phrase.
Context
The father's oratory runs on borrowed and inverted erudition: Ryle's "ghost in the machine" flipped to fit the body-first creed, with "to quote a phrase" flagging the theft while botching it. Misquotation-as-philosophy — the family's high-literary register already visibly running on fumes a generation before JOI and two before Hal.