His outflung hands traced over the threads of his rug, passed loop by loop through some patient woman's hands. Or maybe she hadn't been patient. Maybe she'd been tired, or irritated, or distracted, or hungry, or angry. Maybe she had been dying. But her hands had kept moving, all the same.

Colonel Otto, do you have a, perhaps, fuller and more detailed account than your preliminary one of why my Imperial Security building is now largely an underground installation? From a technical perspective.

I'm sorry. I can love you. I can grieve for you, or with you. I can share your pain. But I cannot judge you.

If power was an illusion, wasn't weakness necessarily one also?

The world demands I make good choices on no information, and then blames my maidenhood for my mistakes, as if my maidenhood were responsible for my ignorance. Ignorance is not stupidity, but it might as well be. And I do not like feeling stupid.

My dinner party,' Miles grated. 'It's just breaking up.' And sinking. All souls feared lost.

Seems like half my anxiety dreams are about airports.