Remaking the world wasn't always a stage show and a cheering crowd. Politics was just warfare by other means. The losers didn't get to hold rallies.

At the birth of a new world, there will be always pain.

Being alive and living aren't the same.

This is bigger than you," said Mr. Baram. "You can bring down this whole system. Erase the data that enslaves so many. Jubilee. Freedom. Forgiveness. Is that not enough?

A grudge was just another debt owed.

It was good to be admired for something. Everyone should feel that way sometimes, he thought.

He was a real-life soldier playing soldier from his memories of made up soldiers.

There was no convincing him that only a fool chased the approval of a dead man.

Amnesia was a soldier's best friend, and luckily, it could be taught. Missing limbs still ache, but missing memories never do.

What made some words scarier than others, some sounds too dangerous to be said? Memory. It wasn’t the words themselves that had power but the memories that stuck to words like ticks on deer, draining and infecting them. If you shut down your memory and ignored the knowing-self inside you, you could say anything.