A preoccupation with the next world clearly shows an inability to cope credibly with this one.

The only problem they had ... was in drawing the fine differences between war-mass murder of people wearing a uniform not your own; justifiable loss-mass murder of your own troops, but with substantial gains; and criminal negligence-mass murder of your own troops, without appreciable benefit.

Like Bancroft, MacIntyre had been a man of power, and like all men of power, when he talked of prices worth paying, you could be sure of one thing. Someone else was paying.

It has been a messy week, and I blame myself as much as anyone else. I feel like a behaviourist who has designed her rat’s maze poorly.

Potential, and the will to deploy it. That's all magic is in the end, you know.

Everyone's afraid of what they don't understand," Ringil said quietly.

The difference between virtuality and life is very simple. In a construct you know everything is being run by an all-powerful machine.Reality doesn't offer this assurance, so it's very easy to develop the mistaken impression that you're in control.Quellcrest FalconerEthics on the Precipice

There's a sameness to streetlife. On every world I've ever been, the same underlying patterns play out, flaunt and vaunt, buy and sell, like some distilled essence of human behavior seeping out from whatever clanking political machine has been dropped on it from above.

Hand over your responses to the man who triggers them, and you have already lost the battle for self. Look beyond, and find yourself there instead.

...the tongues of men are not much leashed by concerns for accuracy or truth.

No such thing as time travel, he'd rumbled patiently, once. Only live with what you've done, and try in the future to do what you're happy to live with.

In the Envoy Corps, you take what is offered, Virginia Vidaura said, somewhere in the corridors of my memory. And that must sometimes be enough.