Pj

“John Henry Holliday believed in science, in rationality, and in free will. He believed in study, in the methodical acquisition and accumulation of useful skills. He believed that he could homestead his future with planning and preparation: sending scouts ahead and settling it with pioneering effort. Above all, he believed in practice, which increased predictability and reduced the element of chance in any situation. The very word made him feel calm. Piano practice. Dental practice. Pistol practice, poker practice. Practice was power. Practice was authority over his own destiny. Luck? That was what fools called ignorance and laziness and despair when they gave themselves up to the turn of a card, and lost, and lost, and lost …”
― Mary Doria Russell, Doc

“You don’t realize how loud a heart is until you’ve run the whole length of a train platform and you’re left standing in the cloud of silence that the train spews out as it abandons you.”
― Fredrik Backman, My Friends

“There wasn’t an iota of Information Ministry training that covered tripartite negotiations from the bridge of a Fleet flagship, where one of the negotiating parties wasn’t even human and one of the others wasn’t Teixcalaanli, and none of the parties were Information agents except the negotiator. She should write a procedure manual. If she lived long enough to be that bored.”
― Arkady Martine, A Desolation Called Peace

“The name the man had chosen, it turned out, was Thirty-Six All-Terrain Tundra Vehicle, a revelation that produced in both Mahit and Three Seagrass a kind of stunned silence.”
― Arkady Martine, A Memory Called Empire