Brock

“Just a bit of violent shaking and thwacking ejected a few spurts of the ochre slurry from the pore-size orifice at the top of the bottle, which was guarded by a quarter-inch encrustation. Most of it hit his plate, and some impacted on his sandwich.”
― Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age

“Western political thought tended to be rather brittle; as soon as the state became corrupt, everything ceased to make sense. Confucianism always retained its equilibrium, like a cork that could float as well in spring water or raw sewage.”
― Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age

“Insult, like many such feelings, is experienced in the soul of the person addressed; it is not something that can be granted or withheld by the person doing the addressing.”
― Iain M. Banks, Surface Detail

“Even the most urbanely sophisticated, scrupulously empathic and excruciatingly polite civilisation, it had been suggested, was just a hegswarm with a sense of proportion.”
― Iain M. Banks, Surface Detail