Ryan Wilson

“He learned more about the Empire itself, its history and politics, philosophy and religion, its beliefs and mores, and its mixtures of subspecies and sexes. It seemed to him to be an unbearably vivid tangle of contradictions; at the same time pathologically violent and lugubriously sentimental, startlingly barbaric and surprisingly sophisticated, fabulously rich and grindingly poor (but also, undeniably, unequivocally fascinating).”
― Iain M. Banks, The Player of Games

“Trauma has a knack for macerating the past so all that remains are the sharp edges of the agony you sustained.”
― Cassandra Khaw, The Library at Hellebore

“Hate to tell you but the only time ‘real’ comes into it is when they’re shooting at you. In practice, ‘real’ means dead—anything else, there’s always room for some conversation.”
― Thomas Pynchon, Shadow Ticket

“It’d been my stepfather’s voice too and the voice of so many men I’d met before, all of them charming until privilege crashed into reality, then out came this aggression, this meanness.”
― Cassandra Khaw, The Library at Hellebore