If you're going to make a desperate, hopeless act of defiance you should make it a good one.

Without feelings insignificant decisions become excruciating attempts to compare endless arrays of inconsequential things. It's just easier to handle those with emotions.

Unity, I thought, implies the possibility of disunity. Beginnings imply and require endings.

To be Radchaai is to be civilised.

Let every act be just, and proper, and beneficial.

Good necessitates evil and the two sides of that disk are not always clearly marked.

What, after all, was the point of civilisation if not the well-being of citizens?

It's the people without the money and the power, who desperately want to live, for those people small things aren't small at all.

Things happen the way they happen because the world is the way it is.

When one is the agent of order and civilisation in the universe, one doesn't stoop to negotiate. Especially with nonhumans.

Surely it isn't illegal here to complain about young people these days? How cruel. I had thought it a basic part of human nature, one of the few universally practiced human customs.

I hate committing myself to anything. It's probably the lack of discipline, honestly. I'm probably a spoiled brat worried about getting my way every time.

I don't believe in divorce. I believe in widowhood.

Anyone can have a once-upon-a-time or a happily-ever-after, but it's the journey between that makes the story worth telling.

A corporation like Enron is a person with a legal identity and no ethical accountability.

Goodbyes are sad, no matter what the promise of tomorrow is.

We need statutory spending limits written into law.

I can only say I wish I had slept with everyone I am accused of.

The truth is that we all have lives that are complicated. We all get hurt by people we love sometimes. It's laughable to believe that anyone is immune. The important thing is how you behave.

We did it together. Not one individual carried this team.

I definitely want to teach my daughter Spanish.