Christopher McMahon

“Words are never 'only words'; they matter because they define the contours of what we can do.”
― Slavoj Žižek

“Force and fraud are in war the two cardinal virtues.”
― Thomas Hobbes

“Something Vimes had learned as a young guard drifted up from memory. If you have to look along the shaft of an arrow from the wrong end, if a man has you entirely at his mercy, then hope like hell that man is an evil man. Because the evil like power, power over people, and they want to see you in fear. They want you to know you're going to die. So they'll talk. They'll gloat.

They'll watch you squirm. They'll put off the moment of murder like another man will put off a good cigar.

So hope like hell your captor is an evil man. A good man will kill you with hardly a word.”
― Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms

“Texts are not finished objects.”
― Edward W. Said, Culture and Imperialism