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.

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

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

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

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

If there was anything any Radchaai considered essential for civilised life, it was tea.

Or is anyone's identity a matter of fragments held together by convenient or useful narrative, that in ordinary circumstances never reveals itself as a fiction? Or is it really a fiction?