Céline

“Everything changes, see above. Nothing changes more often, more rapidly or more radically than the past. Yesterday’s heroes are today’s villains. Yesterday’s eternal truths are today’s exploded myths. Yesterday’s right is today’s wrong, yesterday’s good is today’s evil. And tomorrow it’ll all be one hundred and eighty degrees different, on that you can rely.

Which is odd, since the past has already happened; it’s done, complete, finished, signed off, sealed, delivered; dead. But, then, dead things change a hell of a lot, as the smell testifies. I tend to think of the past as compost; drifts of dead yesterdays rotting down into a fine mulch, in which all sorts of weeds germinate, sprout and flourish. Of course, the past changes, it can’t not change, and what was true yesterday—

See above, passim. Change and decay in all around I see; everything changes, except for me.”
― K.J. Parker, How to Rule an Empire and Get Away with It

“Since when did you care about the enemy? You know what that word means, don’t you? Or would it help if you looked it up?”

“I know what it means,” she said. “It means what you want it to mean. It means you can do what you damn well like. Do you like having people killed, Notker? Does it make you feel big and strong?”

“Enemy means someone who wants to hurt you,” I said. “Them or us, simple as that.”

“Simple.” She gave me a look I won’t forget in a hurry. “I don’t think there’s any point talking to you. Remember Andronica in The Golden Mask? That’s you, just the wrong way round.”
― K.J. Parker, How to Rule an Empire and Get Away with It

“There was jealous admiration: of beggars for commoners, of commoners for gentry, of gentry for nobility, of nobility for royalty, all twisting their necks looking always up to what they didn’t quite have. There was warlike enthusiasm, mostly from those who’d never drawn a sword in their lives, since those used to swinging them tend to know better. There was patriotic fervour enough to drown an island full of foreign scum, and righteous delight that the Union made the best young bastards in the world. There was civic pride from the denizens of mighty Adua, City of White Towers, for no one breathed vapours so thick or drank water as dirty as they did, nor paid so much for rooms so small.”
― Joe Abercrombie, A Little Hatred

“Les moralistes qui affirment que l’homme d’État doit être le serviteur de sa nation n’ont rien compris au gouvernement. Gouverner n’est pas un ministère ; voilà bien une idée pour le clergé, un vœu pieux qui peut mener à de dangereuses dérives. La vérité est plus simple : gouverner, c’est comme coucher. Si les deux partenaires aiment ça, ils se confondent. Ils partagent tout. J’ai une connaissance intime de la république. Je sais tout de ses faiblesses : la vanité, la coquetterie artistique, l’affairisme, le clientélisme, la corruption, le populisme, le chauvinisme, la calomnie… Sans oublier le mépris, bien sûr. Autant de petits travers qu’il suffit de flatter pour circonvenir les élites, pour faire brailler la plèbe dans la rue, pour faire crier la république tout entière comme une courtisane. Je baise la république, et je la baise bien. J’ai cerné l’essence même de Ciudalia, et c’est la raison pour laquelle Ciudalia m’aime. Ce qui fait la grandeur de Leonide Ducatore fait la grandeur de Ciudalia. Dès lors, pourquoi me priverais-je de jouir de l’État ? Je le sers en me servant.”
― Jean-Philippe Jaworski, Gagner la guerre