Heather

“The heart of democracy is violence, Miss Tagwynn,” Esterbrook said. “In order to decide what to do, we take a count of everyone for and against it, and then do whatever the larger side wishes to do. We’re having a symbolic battle, its outcome decided by simple numbers. It saves us time and no end of trouble counting actual bodies—but don’t mistake it for anything but ritualized violence. And every few years, if the person we elected doesn’t do the job we wanted, we vote him out of office—we symbolically behead him and replace him with someone else. Again, without the actual pain and bloodshed, but acting out the ritual of violence nonetheless. It’s actually a very practical way of getting things done.”
― Jim Butcher, The Aeronaut's Windlass

“Each creature had something it excelled at, he supposed. Humans could manage knots easily, and cats could do everything else.”
― Jim Butcher, The Aeronaut's Windlass

“I'd forgotten not all victories are about saving the universe.”
― Steven Moffat

“Consciousness amplifies the weak signals that, like cobwebs spun between trees, web Narratives together. Moreover, it amplifies them selectively and in that way creates feedback loops that steer the Narratives.”
― Neal Stephenson, Anathem