Enough of that, you damned conspirators, you will have us hanged a great deal sooner than we will.

Something about that whole process of building the structure of that game turned into a real kind of lightbulb moment for me as a writer.

Temeraire said, 'It is very nice how many books there are, indeed. And on so many subjects!

You can actually muck with history and think about what if, why not. What if there were dragons in the Incan Empire that allowed them to resist colonization? What if there were a massive dragon empire in the middle of the interior of southern Africa that decided to take objection to the slave trade?

All of a sudden, I sort of started to feel that I was constrained by the characters as opposed to enjoying them. And that remains for me to this day the line that I know where it's like, OK, you're not writing fan fiction anymore.

Trying to out-guess Bonaparte; the thought makes my blood run cold.

Next you will cry about taxation without representation, and throw a basket of tea into the harbor. You are indeed a very Jacobin at heart, and I think I must give up trying to cure you of it; I can but wash my hands and deny responsibility