Naqi suspected that the ability to turn drunkenness on and off like a switch must be one of the most hallowed of diplomatic skills. - Alastair Reynolds

Imagine a permanent, shivering gloom, and never a moment without hunger, thirst and exhaustion. Imagine the constant fear of suffering illness or injury." "You've just described nine-tenths of human history.

I'd argue with you, but I suspect it would feel a bit like arguing with myself." "Futile?" "Boring.

To feel oneself so tiny, so fragile, so inherently losable, was at first spiritually crushing. But, by the same token, this realisation was also strangely liberating: if an individual human existence meant so little, if one’s actions were so cosmically irrelevant, then the notion of some absolute moral framework made about as much sense as the universal ether. Measured against the infinite, therefore, people were no more capable of meaningful sin—or meaningful good—than ants, or dust.
Worlds barely registered sin. Suns hardly deigned to notice it. On the scale of solar systems and galaxies, it meant nothing at all. It was like some obscure subatomic force that simply petered out on those scales.