Nature has become something new. It is ours now, truly. And if our creation devours us, how poetic will that be?

Men are loyal when you lead from the front.

She smiles at him, too young to know him for a stranger, and too innocent yet to care.

It's still a load. If there was balance, the soldier boys would all be dead, and we'd be sitting pretty in the middle of the Drowned Cities, shipping marble and steel and copper and getting paid Red Chinese for every kilo. We'd be rich and they'd be dead, if there was such a thing as the Scavenge God, or his scales. And that goes double for the Deepwater priests. They're all full of it. Nothing balances out.

What I'm hoping to do though is to ground my extrapolations in specificity, and to make sure that the story I tell is deliberately and honestly told.

When you were alone in the rising ocean, you grabbed whatever raft 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.