Lir

“Then let me tell you something instead. When they make an Envoy, do you want to know what they do? They burn out every evolved violence limitation instinct in the human psyche. Submission signal recognition, pecking-order dynamics, pack loyalties. It all goes, tuned out a neuron at a time; and they replace it with a conscious will to harm.” He stared back at me in silence. “Do you understand me? It would have been easier to kill you just then. It would have been easier. I had to stop myself. That’s what an Envoy is, Curtis. A reassembled human. An artifice.”
― Richard K. Morgan, Altered Carbon

“Soldiers follow orders. Regardless. The moment you refuse to carry out an order, you’re no longer a soldier. You’re just a paid killer trying to renegotiate your contract.”
― Richard K. Morgan, Broken Angels

“He’s a pretty serious believer.’ ‘Yeah? Funny how it doesn’t get in the way of his commercial life.’ ‘Yeah, well. Organised religion, you know.”
― Richard K. Morgan, Broken Angels

“Shopping is physical interaction, exercise of decision-making capacity, sating of the desire to acquire, and an impulse to more acquisition, a scouting urge. It’s so basically fucking human when you think about it. You’ve got to learn to love it,”
― Richard K. Morgan, Altered Carbon