Yariv

“We are, each of us, a multitude. I am not the man I was this morning, nor the man of yesterday. I am a throng of myself queued through time. We are, gentle reader, each a crowd within a crowd.”
― Josiah Bancroft, Arm of the Sphinx

“Speechifying was never my forte – one on one I can generally figure out what I need to do to get someone moving in my direction, but pool enough of them together and the sheer mass of idiocy becomes immobile.”
― Daniel Polansky, Tomorrow, the Killing

“The visit, like all visits home for a long time now, has been an obscure failure. When is it we cease to be able to go back, truly go back? What secret door is it that closes?”
― Andrew Miller, Pure

“Being, in my own small way, a part of Authority, it never ceases to amaze me how much people believe in it and trust it. I see it from the inside, of course—inefficiencies, stupidities, corruption, bloody-minded ignorance and simple lack of resources to cope with the magnitude of the endless, ever-multiplying problems. But other people see it from the outside. They see the Land Walls. They see the emperor’s head on the coins, with Victory on the reverse. They see the temples. They see soldiers in shining armour. They see, and they believe, that the empire is big, strong, wise, unbeatable.”
― K.J. Parker, Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City