Falling didn't bother me. I could fall forever and not be hurt. It's stopping that's the problem.

Translator Dlique was saying, very earnestly, “Eggs are so inadequate, don't you think? I mean, they ought to be able to become anything, but instead you always get a chicken. Or a duck. Or whatever they're programmed to be. You never get anything interesting, like regret, or the middle of the night last week.

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.

The Romans have provided a lot of writers with a model for various interstellar empires, of course, and no wonder. The Roman Empire is a really good example of a large empire that, in one form or another, functioned for quite a long time over a very large area. And over all that time, there was all sorts of exciting drama - civil wars and assassinations and revolts and bits breaking off and being forced back in ... But I didn't want my future - however fanciful it was - to be entirely European. The Radchaai aren't meant to be Romans in Space.

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

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

Falling didn't bother me. I could fall forever and not be hurt. It's stopping that's the problem.