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

To be Radchaai is to be civilised.

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.

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.

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

Thoughts are ephemeral, they evaporate in the moment they occur, unless they are given action and material form. Wishes and intentions, the same. Meaningless, unless they impel you to one choice or another, some deed or course of action, however insignificant. Thoughts that lead to action can be dangerous. Thoughts that do not, mean less than nothing.

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