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Qeng Ho was like a million other doomed civilizations, buried thousands of light-years in the Slowness. Only by luck would they ever penetrate into the Beyond, where faster-than-light travel was possible.
“Politics may come and go, but Greed goes on forever”
The last twenty days have brought more income than the last two years—far more than we can verify and absorb. We’re endangered by our own success.”
recipes themselves become sentient.”
He was guided by what he saw rather than by what he wanted to believe.
“Your curiosity will kill you someday.”
the conclusion was inescapable: one pack, one mind. Minds so evil they could not bear to be close to one another.
She’d almost thought she could make a difference just by talking. What a joke. She had caught a glimpse just now, behind the front: of a being who could play with souls the way a programmer plays with a clever graphic, a being so far beyond her that only its indifference could protect her.
Civilizations in the Slowness could not last more than a few thousand years.
most races eventually exterminated themselves,
Those that didn’t exterminate themselves (and even a few of those that did) eventually struggled back to their original heights.
One of his greatest talents was empathy; no sadist can aspire to perfection without that diagnostic ability.
All evil and good is petty before Nature. Personally, we take comfort from this, that there is a universe to admire that cannot be twisted to villainy or good, but which simply is.
Half-assed programming was a time-filler that, like knitting, must date to the beginning of the human experience.
The heart of manipulation is to empathize without being touched.”
When you challenge Heaven, the stakes are high.
If I can not have Heaven, at least I can still take them to Hell.
Planets and stars were the grains of sand. And the sea had drawn briefly back, letting the brightness of thought reach here where before had been darkness.
