It’s important that someone celebrate our existence," she objected amiably. "People are the only mirror we have to see ourselves in. The domain of all meaning. All virtue, all evil, are contained only in people. There is none in the universe at large. Solitary confinement is a punishment in every human culture.

There is no more hollow feeling than to stand with your honor shattered at your feet while soaring public reputation wraps you in rewards. That's soul-destroying. The other way around is merely very, very irritating.

You try to give away what you want yourself.

Some prices are just too high, no matter how much you may want the prize. The one thing you can't trade for your heart's desire is your heart.

Miles is... Miles; close to a force of nature, climbing up out of his own pages and escaping subordination to any opinion of mine.

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.

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