Ann Leckie - Ancillary Justice (2013)

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People often think they would have made the noblest choice, but when they find themselves actually in such a situation, they discover matters aren't quite so simple.

Ann Leckie
Or is anyone's identity a matter of fragments held together by convenient or useful narrative, that in ordinary circumstances never reveals itself as a fiction? Or is it really a fiction?

Ann Leckie
It's the people without the money and the power, who desperately want to live, for those people small things aren't small at all.

Ann Leckie
Falling didn't bother me. I could fall forever and not be hurt. It's stopping that's the problem.

Ann Leckie
If you're going to make a desperate, hopeless act of defiance you should make it a good one.

Ann Leckie
Thoughts are ephemeral, they evaporate in the moment they occur, unless they are given action and material form. Wishes and intentions, the same. Meaningless, unless they impel you to one choice or another, some deed or course of action, however insignificant. Thoughts that lead to action can be dangerous. Thoughts that do not, mean less than nothing.

Ann Leckie
Things happen the way they happen because the world is the way it is.

Ann Leckie
Good necessitates evil and the two sides of that disk are not always clearly marked.

Ann Leckie
If you're going to do something that crazy, save it for when it'll make a difference. But absent near-omniscience there's no way to know when that is. You can only make your best approximate calculation. You can only make your throw and try to puzzle out the results afterward.

Ann Leckie
You might also see why it seemed a bit odd, to Radchaai ears, to hear someone who believed gravity wells were the land of the dead call people superstitious for worshiping a lizard.

Ann Leckie
It's easy to say that if you were there you would have refused, that you would rather die than participate in the slaughter, but it all looks very different when it's real, when the moment comes to choose.

Ann Leckie
What, after all, was the point of civilization if not the well-being of citizens?

Ann Leckie
We have a saying where I come from: Power requires neither permission nor forgiveness.

Ann Leckie
Now I'm going to make you angry again.
Really? I asked, drily. Aren't you getting tired of that?

Ann Leckie
You don't like me saying that, but here's the truth: luxury always comes at someone else's expense. One of the many advantages of civilization is that one generally doesn't have to see that, if one doesn't wish. You're free to enjoy its benefits without troubling your conscience.

Ann Leckie
Not safe? I asked, all innocence. Surely it isn't illegal here to complain about young people these days? How cruel. I had thought it a basic part of human nature, one of the few universally practiced human customs.

Ann Leckie
I don't confuse abstract philosophical concepts with reality.

Ann Leckie
Without feelings insignificant decisions become excruciating attempts to compare endless arrays of inconsequential things. It's just easier to handle those with emotions.

Ann Leckie