The battered and pathetic thing that represented any claim to conscience I might have had turned away from me in disgust. Oddly, I couldn't blame it. I was disgusted myself. Disgusted at my weakness and my lack of resolution, at my refusal to see justice through in the name of the woman who had borne me.

Apropos, you're going to have to learn to sooner or later that you can't just let other people decide what the world around you should and shouldn't be.

You've always said I should have an inquiring mind," she said. "I have. But not an interrupting one.