The Collapsing Empire (The Interdependency, #1)

by John Scalzi

You’ll be emperox soon enough.” “And then no one can tell me what to do.” “Oh, no,” Batrin said. “Everyone will tell you what to do. But you won’t always have to listen.”

“I worked in marketing,” Rachela I said. “Before I was a prophet. After, too, but we didn’t call it that after that point.”

“I’m continually confronted with the human tendency to ignore or deny facts until the last possible instant. And then for several days after that, too.”

“That’s the human brain,” Attavio VI said. “It creates patterns when there aren’t any. Imagines causality when there is none. Imagines a narrative where none exists. It’s in the design of the brain itself. It’s primed to lie.”