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.

No one else noticed, or cared. It was just something they did. Taking other people’s livestock. Other people’s lives. She watched the soldiers, hating them. They were different in so many ways, white and black, yellow and brown, skinny, short, tall, small, but they were all the same. Didn’t matter if they wore finger-bone necklaces, or baby teeth on bracelets, or tattoos on their chests to ward off bullets. In the end, they were all mangled with battle scars and their eyes were all dead.

Blood is not destiny.

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.

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.

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

Politics is ugly. Never doubt what small men will do for great power.