Embassytown

by China Miéville

Being a child is like nothing. It’s only being. Later, when we think about it, we make it into youth.

That was the marshalling of unconvincing, rote things to express other deeper terrors and resentments. The surface specifics didn’t really matter. This wasn’t about whatever they shouted as they fumbled and implements turned deadly.

What theology that would have been, a god self-worshipping, a drug addicted to itself.

But thatness faces every way: it’s flexible because it’s empty, a universal equivalent. That always means and not that other, too.