Leadership is mostly a power over imagination, and never more so than in combat. The bravest man alone can only be an armed lunatic. The real strength lies in the ability to get others to do your work.

He seemed a man who could carry on stark naked, and only make those around him feel overdressed.

She was as unsettled as if all her star maps had been randomized, leaving her lost; but at least knowing she was lost.

A step backwards toward truth, she supposed, better than mistaken certainties. She felt a forlorn hunger for certainties, even as they receded beyond reach.

The really unforgivable acts are committed by calm men in beautiful green silk rooms, who deal death wholesale, by the shipload, without lust, or anger, or desire, or any redeeming emotion to excuse them but cold fear of some pretended future. But the crimes they hope to prevent in that future are imaginary. The ones they commit in the present—they are real.