Best 21 quotes of Seth Dickinson on MyQuotes

Among societies with only two sexes, they often chose to pass as a man or a woman, and became expert at it.

Beer: Aurdwynn's favourite source of sterile, portable calories.

I am Abdumasi of the House of Abd, master of ships, champion cat gambler, and I challenge you to mortal up-fuckery!

I am Baru Cormorant,” she protested, “accountant.

It was so anathema and yet so necessary: it felt like a razor unraveling her, one cut all the way from her anus to the back of her neck, degloving her whole body and turning her inside out so her secrets were on the outside to become her lies.

I will write your name in the ruin of them. I will paint you across history in the color of their blood.

Look at Tain Shir and you cannot fathom the name behind the cartouche. You cannot extract her reasons. You only see why men turn to religion: for hope that there are gods to oppose her.

Men used to marry men. And women once took wives. It was done by the poor, the starving, the desperate, by those who needed a business pact or a shared roof. By soldiers on campaign with no one else to turn to. Mostly in was done by those without needs or troubles — done for love. The words tribadist and sodomite, the things they mean and define, came later. Before those words there were only people.

No living thing ever defeated Tain Hu in battle. Only the tide could fight her. Only the moon and the sea together could bring her down.

No war has ever been won by slaughtering the enemy wholesale.

Salt and citrus,” Cairdine Farrier said, joining her at the stern with a lemon in each hand. “The chemicals of empire.” “Salt to preserve food for long journeys,” Baru recited. “Citrus for scurvy.

She accepted the bargain without understanding the price. A terrible mistake, for an accountant.

She accepts the world as it is and the world accepts her thus. She is not mastered. What is done to her cannot confine what she will do.

Tain Shir walks the deck of RNS Sulane between the bombs and incendiaries and steel-tipped barbs. A weapon among weapons but she alone is free. The tragedy of the knife is the hilt. The tragedy of the crossbow is the trigger. Shir has neither. She cannot be gripped nor fired. She is unmastered. The sailors are rude with her. So be it. Etiquitte is the domain of those whose power is conditional upon the respect of others, and Shir is unconditional. If she drifted alone in the void beyond the moon or if she walked among the monarchs of the ancient Cheetah Palaces she would not be altered in her capabilities or her intentions, for not one truth of her resides within a relationship to any other thing.

The Hierarchic Qualm: The sword kills. But the arm moves the sword. Is the arm to blame for murder? No. The mind moves the arm. Is the mind to blame? No. The mind has sworn an oath to duty, and that duty moves the mind, as written by the Throne. So it is that a servant of the Throne is blameless.

Trust, like money, needed a guarantee to back it.

Was goodness still good if you hewed it out of tactical necessity? Was there, Baru wondered, any difference between being good and pretending to be good for your own gain, if you took the same actions in the end? Was there any difference between telling the truth unconditionally, and deploying the truth in service of your agenda, if you told the same truth?

We all force our true selves into little hashes and show them like passwords. A smile is a hashing function, and a word, and a cry. The cry is not the grief, the word is not the meaning, and smile is not the joy: we cannot run the hash in reverse, we cannot get from the sign to the absolute truth. Maybe the smile is false. Maybe the grief is a lie.

You can’t go home.” “Why not?” “I don’t know. Because it’s gone.” Aminata frowned, finished her drink, and nodded. “You can’t find it again. Even if you go back, it’s not there anymore. That’s history, that’s how it works! Someone’s always changing someone else.

Your power is secret, and in secret it is total. But to use your power you must touch the world. To touch you must be touched, to be touched is to be seen, to be seen is to be known. To be known is to perish. Act subtly, lest you diminish.

Your tactics are self-centered. You have forgotten that you are not the only player on the board, that inherent talent speaks for no more than experience, and that others around you seek to expand their authority and constrain yours.