Zoe

“This work can never satisfy, Din, for it can never finish. The dead cannot be restored. Vice and bribery will never be totally banished from the cantons. And the drop of corruption that lies within every society shall always persist. The duty of the ludex is not to boldly vanquish it but to manage it. We keep the stain from spreading, yes, but it is never gone. Yet this job is perhaps the most important in all the Iyalets, for without it, well… the Empire would come to look much like Yarrow, where the powerful and the cruel prevail without check. And tell me - does that realm look capable of fighting off a leviathan?”
― Robert Jackson Bennett, A Drop of Corruption

“There is at least as much contrariness in your character as in mine. Why not come and be contrary with me?”
― Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell