She’d survived the Drowned Cities because she wasn’t anything like Mouse. When the bullets started flying and warlords started making examples of peacekeeper collaborators, Mahlia had kept her head down, instead of standing up like Mouse. She’d looked out for herself, first. And because of that, she’d survived.

At some point, you realize you can't provide a perfectly monolithic description of a foreign culture's future any more than you can provide a monolithic description of your own hometown's future. Your choices about what to emphasize and what to leave out make all the difference, and ultimately, your fingerprints and biases and viewpoints are going to be all over the story.

Knowledge is simply a terrible ocean we must cross, and hope that wisdom lies on the other side.

The more you read about and immerse in a culture, the more it comes alive, and the more textured and nuanced and detailed and unstereotypable it becomes.

For me as a kid, reading cyberpunk was like seeing the world for the first time. Gibson's Neuromancer wasn't just stylistically stunning; it felt like the template for a future that we were actively building. I remember reading Sterling's Islands in the Net and suddenly understanding the disruptive potential of technology once it got out into the street. Cyberpunk felt urgent. It wasn't the future 15 minutes out - it was the future sideswiping you and leaving you in a full-body cast as it passed by.

Killing isn't free. It takes something out of you every time you do it. You get their life; they get a piece of your soul. It's always a trade.

They say in the military that a good battle plan can last as long as five minutes in real fighting. After that, it comes down to if the general is favored by fate and the spirits.