There is a rule for fantasy writers: The more truth you mix in with a lie, the stronger it gets.
Dear Artificer, I’ve blown my quanta and gone to the Good Place!
What’s loved, lives.
When governments murder those who speak the truth, it is time to get new governments.
Most people think it’s normal to have a nameless sorrow at the bottom of your soul.
We knew you were hurting,” Gelert said. “But sometimes – that idiom about being there for somebody, actually just means to be there. Doing anything, saying anything, sometimes you know it’ll hurt them worse than just being quiet, and being close.
This is why one must be careful with life,” her father had said, in very controlled wrath. “Death is the most hateful thing. Don’t allow the destruction of what you can never restore.
Even in your world, people have died for words. Sometimes they’ve died of them. One learns to be careful what one says in such a world. And like anything so powerful, like any weapon, words cut both ways. They redeem and betray – sometimes both at once. The attribute we name as a virtue may also turn out to be our bane. So we watch what we call things – in case we should turn out to be right.
If you see an injustice, and don’t move to right it when you have a chance, history won’t forget that, either.
Those who want war will find causes, no matter how many of them you take away.
What is the point of celebrating diversity if one tries to make all the elements of it the same?
I will meet the cruel and the cowardly today, she thought, liars and the envious, the uncaring and unknowing: they will be all around. But their numbers and their carelessness do not mean I have to be like them. For my own part, I know my job; my commissions comes from Those Who Are.
When honor dies – when trust is a useless thing – what use is life?
Meowing is not counted here, since cats rarely seem to meow at each other. That type of vocalization is usually a “pidgin” language used for getting human’s attention: the cat equivalent of “Just talk to them clearly and loudly and they’ll get what you mean sooner or later.
When friends couldn’t be found, the books were always waiting with something new to tell. Life that was getting too much the same could be shaken up in a few minutes by the pictures in a book of some ancient temple newly discovered deep in a rain-forest, a fuzzy photo of Uranus with it’s up-and-down rings, or a prismed picture taken through the faceted eye of a bee.
Become careless with fire, and sure enough, fire will burn you. Do treachery, and treachery will be done you. Kill, and be punished with death. All these I’ve done. Now I pay the price, in my own flesh and blood.
She thought briefly of one police force in a neighboring state, some years back, which without a second thought had for many years classified people murdered in its jurisdiction as “male victim,” “female victim,” and “prostitute.
Not even Spock had stayed aboard for that – he found breathing vacuum for any length of time to be aesthetically unpleasant.
At any rate, after five years Surak came out of the wilds, took a small apartment in the capital, near his parents’ house, and began to write for the information networks.
As I said, wear flats. No point in injuring them with heels while they’re abasing themselves.
They took her intent and read that too, turning it into fact.