"No one ever talks about the really hard parts of first contact with intelligent alien life: pronouns. I'm going to go with "he" for now, because it just seems rude to call a thinking being "it". Also, until I hear otherwise, his name is Rocky."
"Blood gets you nothing but more blood. It follows me now, always, like my shadow, and like my shadow I can never be free of it. I should never be free of it. I've earned it. I've deserved it. I've sought it out. Such is my punishment."
"Hard words are for fools and cowards. If you mean to kill, you're better getting right to it than talking about it. Talk only makes the other man ready, and that's the last thing you want."
"Good people will turn monstrous when it's down to their survival or someone else's."
"I have to stay here? In this utterly unacceptable reality where all the good I've ever done, all the good I've ever known, is an evil?"
"Brilliant men, even moderately intelligent men, in this city get handed all kinds of opportunities to succeed. Brilliant women have to fight for those opportunities, and when we get them, we have to defend them tooth and nail, or they'll be snatched away."
"I don't want a hole in my brynja if we are going to go back into Darl and try to kill them," Orka said. "Kill who?" "All of them."
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