Richard

“Because if star travel is so easy that it can be achieved in three days—or less, depending how long it took them to detect Blackbird’s appearance—then the galaxy is full, and species must compete over limited space and resources. The material conditions dictate it. We must assume that subjugation or extermination are the normal result of first contact.”
― Seth Dickinson, Exordia

“As I write these words, multiple genocides are in progress. I feel no certainty for the future. Half my nation is so in thrall to its own bigoted fantasies that I neither expect nor particularly want the United States to survive.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, Authority

“There are seven passions in the universe, Ssrin tells her. Seven patterns which appear again and again, across species, across time and space. There are many ideas about why. She shares none of them. She only names the passions for Anna. Preyjest is the chasing passion, the hunting passion. (Her heads show Anna: one slithering up another’s neck, reaching for it with a forked tongue-tip. At the last instant the other slips away.) Prajna is the lonely passion. The need for truth. One star in the dark, trying to brighten. Caryatasis is the dream of all disciples. The passion that binds students to their teacher. It happens when one soul changes many, and many change toward the one. Geashade hurts in the end, and cannot be ended without the hurt. Hesper is the warmth of a need unexpectedly met. Generosity from a stranger. Love from a friend. It is associated with silence: things said without speaking. Rath is the passion which stole gravity’s strength. Like gravity it draws things together to clash, and leaves scars shaped like the enemy. Serendure is the last and greatest. It is the unbreakable bond which may be trust and may be dependence. It persists whether it is wanted or not. It is like the force which binds quarks together: stronger when it is pulled. Each passion, Ssrin says, is a relationship between souls. Souls are the letters that make these words.”
― Seth Dickinson, Exordia

“Pervasive violence and dispossession are more than sidebars or parentheses in the story of American history. They call into question its central thesis. The exclusion of Native Americans was codified in the Constitution, maintained throughout the antebellum era, and legislated into the twentieth century: far from being incidental, it enabled the development of the United States. U.S. history as we currently know it does not account for the centrality of Native Americans.”
― Ned Blackhawk, The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History