This is a rich man’s fight,” said Sancia. “A rich man’s game. And we’re all just pieces on the board to you. You think you’re different, Orso, but you’re just like all the rest of them!

I have never met a person who possessed a privilege who did not exercise that privilege to the fullest extent that they possibly could. Say what you like of a belief... of a party... of a finance system... of a power. All I see is privilege and its consequences. States are not in my opinion composed of structures supporting privilege but of structures denying it... in other words deciding who is not invited to the table.

The woman smiles. The smile is neither pleasant nor unpleasant: it is a smile like fine silver plate, used for one occasion and polished and put away once finished.

Is this how governments are made? Forcing decisions on wounded people in the middle of the night?

And then he understands: it’s a loop, an endless loop of injured children, growing old but keeping their pain fresh and new, causing yet more injury and starting the whole cycle over again.

Torture usually gets you whatever you want to hear. And people are usually much more forgiving of this method. Mostly because they’re never quite sure any of it really happened.

It’s like an eraser, only I designed it to be attracted to erase one specific thing... the tissue lining the human heart.

She devoted her life to this place, this work. If that doesn’t make a home, Turyin Mulaghesh, then nothing does.

But that which you draw power from, you are also powerless before.

You can be a girl at any age, you know. Girls at forty. Girls at fifty. There’s a kind of flightiness to them, just like how a man at forty can have the impatience and belligerence of a five-year-old boy. But you can also be a woman at any age.