"Friendship was just diplomacy by other means, after all."

"Some of them defined ideology as an imaginary relationship to a real situation."

"For of course it was impossible that she was doing it all without cause. That was the nature of power; when you had i…"

"In games there are rules, but in life the rules keep changing."

"No—living on after the memory died was mere farce, pointless and awful."

"They were so ignorant! Young men and women, educated very carefully to be apolitical, to be technicians who thought t…"

"And then she was tired of talk again, tired of its uselessness. It had never been any more than it was now: whispers …"

"Maya was very insistent that they learn their math well. “You’re getting a horrible education,” she would say, shakin…"

"It was a mistake to speak one’s mind at any time, unless it perfectly matched your political purpose; and it never di…"

"It was a world of acts, and words had no more influence on acts than the sound of a waterfall has on the flow of the …"