Children of Memory (Children of Time, #3)

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

You will fail, and when you do, you must do everything you can to fail as little as possible. Don’t let the failure get its teeth into you. You will make decisions that come with a cost. That is Command. Do not let the cost consume you.

Things fall apart, though, and entropy is the landlord whose rent always gets paid.

Knowledge and understanding is the crown atop the hierarchy of needs, the thing you can’t have enough of.