Vincent Harris

“A wise man once told me that flesh was the cheapest resource in the human universe and that life spends more easily than gold. I laughed when I heard that and denied him. I was a fool to do so. How little I knew. The arch that led in”
― Christopher Ruocchio, Empire of Silence

“But to know a thing and to see it, to experience it, are as different as the moon and the finger pointing to it. Knowledge is not truth, only the apprehension of it. Experience is something else entirely.”
― Christopher Ruocchio, Ashes of Man

“Evil occurs because we are insufficient to challenge it. Too weak to stop it at the gates, too blind to see it bubbling within. Were we all angels in our virtue and heroes in our capacity, we might hold all chaos at bay, might stop even the unkindling of the stars. Yet we are but men.”
― Christopher Ruocchio, Ashes of Man

“Tools” are the weapons of war, and the industrial and logistical means by which those weapons are constructed.

[He swivels in his chair, motioning to a picture above his desk. I lean closer and see that it’s not a picture but a framed label.]

Ingredients:

molasses from the United States

anise from Spain

licorice from France

vanilla (bourbon) from Madagascar

cinnamon from Sri Lanka

cloves from Indonesia

wintergreen from China

pimento berry oil from Jamaica

balsam oil from Peru

And that’s just for a bottle of peacetime root beer. We’re not even talking about something like a desktop PC, or a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier.”
― Max Brooks, World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War