I'm a chess piece. A pawn,' she said. 'I can be sacrificed, but I cannot be captured. To be captured would be the end of the game.

The problem with surviving was that you ended up with the ghosts of everyone you’d ever left behind riding on your shoulders.

It’s human nature to tear one another apart. Be glad you come from such a successful line of killers.

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.

Knowledge is always two-edged. For every benefit, there is hazard. For every good, evil.

Never beg for mercy. Accept that you have failed. Begging is for dogs and humans.

Life is exponential. Two becomes four, becomes ten thousand, becomes a plague.