i know hearing that might hit some of you in the heart, and well, good. it's good to feel a little bad now and again.

“darling child,” I said, “for the love of all that’s good, will you please get a bowl of water for that fish?”

komugi... are you still here?

i just wanna get out. all i want to do is go. i don't care about the people here, i don't wanna see another sunset ever again.

in spite of the seditious delight of adolescent horseplay, the strange quasi-heterosexual knowledge that you would probably enjoy watching your best friend fuck an attractive woman, he kind of knew, right then, that it meant he, erik, wasn't going to end up with rosamaria.

so you have a jar of bees,

it is our duty, given to us by god, to imagine, and pray for, and build a world where we may run free through the fields.

but now... now she and i are equal! now, i've beaten her! haha! i'm the one who's always been there in her heart! i've beaten her, in the end.

and the terrifying thing is that her solution isn't a superweapon at all. it's bodies. it's just bodies, one and then another, and then another, a planet worth, and then a sector, and then another. bury rigour in population count, she thinks. there's enough people to go around.

tain hu's ghost hand cupped the right of her face. go away, baru thought. i'm bruised. you're hurting my eye. but the hand would not go.

because you're going to be something extraordinary. you're going to be a human being.

it strikes me, that someone, somewhere, really loved these horses. and wanted to save them.

huh? no. we're just normal friends.

it's been five years. and i've spent my time feeling bad about it. i think if valence saw me now, part of them would be proud of me. and i'm happy enough with that.

england has always been disinclined to accept human nature.

“nice cloak. you look like hu.” “thanks,” she said, and tried to hug him. “easy,” he said fending her off. “easy there. you've gotten so handsy lately.”

and i think: i am only growing homes for maggots. everything is this way. in the end we are only making more homes, better homes, for maggots.

so tau was silent, and witnessed, glad that the ordinary was worth witnessing.

jesus, someone's killing clayton. fuck you. im supposed to kill clayton.

“i'll help you find this bird, if you help me get rid of all these other birds.” “easy. easy. we just show them where the sky is. no problem.”

my name was gur sevraq, and i have been stolen from you. but you will win anyway. you must.

baru saw in the city what she felt in herself: the two-faced allegiances, the fearful monitoring of self and surroundings, the whimpering need to please, somehow kneeling alongside marrow deep defiance.

a little bit after my 22nd birthday, i paid this burnout kid who used to hit on me in the food court $50 to bury me alive.

i love you dude. let it rip.

audy. you're a robot, too.

it strikes me, that someone, somewhere, really loved these horses. and wanted to save them.

I just feel like ... you think you have to be iron. You have to help other people, but you can't be the one who needs help. And I think that's stupid. You're stupid if you think that.

i want us to be friends like that.

if anyone's gonna ruin your night, mae, it really should be you.

i have really up up days and really down down days. and i don't know which it is until it's over sometimes.

every morning, the crane-wife is exhausted, but she is a woman again. to keep becoming a woman is so much self-erasing work.

“once,” she said, sitting beside him, “there were no chairs except thrones. everyone else sat on benches.”

“that's the tackiest jacket i've ever seen. what happened to the classy guy who used to run the grand?” “get off me.”

do you know? do you know? have you heard the news?

it's this. it's tears, forever. you don't get to win. you just have to keep trying, and losing people. you just have to see it go bad, over and over and over again. it gets close. you get close, over and over again, and then they take it from you.

i am a woman, an old woman, weak, stupid, all i do is wrong. all i touch turns to ashes, shadow, stone. i am the creature of darkness, swollen with darkness. only fire can cleanse me. only fire can eat me, eat me away like—

everything in the world happened in circle, the whale worlds told tau. this was why the world was held together. the end of the story told the beginning how to happen, so that the story could go on.

so tau was silent, and witnessed, glad that the ordinary was worth witnessing.

taranoke, taranoke, i am the burnt and unpeopled husk of taranoke, i am your home as you deserve to find it, i am the true and empty shape of your heart.

anyway, you're a human right? that's hilarious.

baru can play games of strategy with the very masters of those games. but in the end she cannot do what shir is capable of doing. she cannot reach across the board and cut the other player's throat. you cannot destroy the masters by mastering them. you destroy them by destroying.

if we didn't take care of the people who end up here, this place would just be a couple of ruins and some cargo containers.

i believe in the future. i think you need to imagine your future and then live in it. i believe in unfathomable quantities of nourishment.

oh, i love you 'cause i love you 'cause i can.

it's been five years. and i've spent my time feeling bad about it. i think if valence saw me now, part of them would be proud of me. and i'm happy enough with that.

“once,” she said, sitting beside him, “there were no chairs except thrones. everyone else sat on benches.”

in the days that follow, consider your hands, and remember that they are yours.

every blade of grass in this meadow has a shadow. not one has been omitted or miscalculated. god made the rules by which shadows are cast, and now each and every sprout obeys that rule. the world is so much.

“of course i die. i'm not the kind of immortal who never dies, baru. just the kind that lives forever.”

well, you know, i've always said gods eat bread, too.