Andrew Rivard

“One reason was that Gurgeh was speaking Eächic all the time. Flere-Imsaho was always a little dubious about trying to be so precise about human behavior, but it had been briefed that when Culture people didn’t speak Marain for a long time and did speak another language, they were liable to change; they acted differently, they started to think in that other language, they lost the carefully balanced interpretative structure of the Culture language, left its subtle shifts of cadence, tone and rhythm behind for, in virtually every case, something much cruder.”
― Iain M. Banks, The Player of Games

“That man behaves so much like the villain in a work of literature, it’s almost funny,” Arsibalt observed. “Yes,” said one of the Hundreders, “it’s as if he’d never heard of foreshadowing.”
― Neal Stephenson, Anathem

“Is that a proposal?” “… Yes?” “Dalinar Kholin,” she said. “Surely you can do better.” He rested his hand on the back of her head, touching her black hair, which she had left loose. “Better than you, Navani? No, I don’t think that I could. I don’t think that any man has ever had a chance better than this.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Oathbringer

“Nuala said it was because women were more ethical, Zeb said it was because they were more squeamish, and Philo said it amounted to the same thing.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Year of the Flood