What, after all, was the point of civilisation if not the well-being of citizens?
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.
Things happen the way they happen because the world is the way it is.
Unity, I thought, implies the possibility of disunity. Beginnings imply and require endings.
If there was anything any Radchaai considered essential for civilised life, it was tea.
When one is the agent of order and civilisation in the universe, one doesn't stoop to negotiate. Especially with nonhumans.