To be Radchaai is to be civilised.

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

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

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.

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.

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.