Philip

“There’s nothing worse than a smartass who pretends not to understand hyperbole.”
― Steven Brust, Jhegaala

“She grinned and nodded and another frozen thing inside of me melted.”
― Steven Brust, The Incrementalists

“If you’re trying to scare me,” I said, “it’s working.” “I can do a great deal more than scare you.” Where do they get this stuff? “Um, if I thought all you could do was scare me, you couldn’t scare me, if you see what I mean.” “We’ll see how funny you are in a little while.” I was mildly curious about that myself.”
― Steven Brust, Jhegaala

“Value’ has no meaning other than in relation to living beings. The value of a thing is always relative to a particular person, is completely personal and different in quantity for each living human—‘market value’ is a fiction, merely a rough guess at the average personal values, all of which must be quantitively different or trade would be impossible.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers