“Posthuman. It was a word from advertising copy, breathless and empty, and all hed ever thought it really meant was that the people using it had a limited imagination about what exactly humans were ...”

“Part of his mind was screaming, but it was a distant one and easy to ignore.”

“War without end. Well, what was history without that? And how would having the stars change anything?”

“Nothing lasted forever. Not peace. Not war. Nothing.”

“The messages coming back flooded the comm buffers with rage and sorrow, threats of vengeance and offers of aid. Those last were the hardest. New colonies still trying to force their way into local ...”

“Because we can't just blow up enough things that this becomes a good situation.”

“...if charity begins at home, empire begins in other men's homes.”

“There are no moral obligations in the game of empire.”

“Language is always the companion of Empire and Empire . . . is one Monarch and one Sword.”

“Power is not revealed by striking hard or often, but by striking true.”

“As time and space are bent by gravity, so too is truth bent by power.”

“What a curious power words have.”