It's a library, only the stupid or the evil are afraid of those
One should never regret one's excesses, only one's failures of nerve.
Empathize with stupidity and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot.
It was the day my grandmother exploded.
It looks perverted and wasteful to us, but then one thing that empires are not about is the efficient use of resources and the spread of happiness; both are typically accomplished despite the economic short-circuiting - corruption and favoritism, mostly- endemic to the system.
I just come up with the stories and write them as well as I can. There's not really a great deal of strokey-beard thinking going on.