She’s a little bit below mediocre, isn’t she? And the worst kind of below-par personality at that: the kind who believes herself destined for great t… - Adam-Troy Castro

What do you think about their position? Do you think it's right for sentient creatures to be owned?"
He emitted a short, cynical laugh, driven by the kind of anger that drives entire lives. "We're all owned, Counselor. It's just a matter of choosing who holds the deed.

They all wore the slack-bored expression of folks doomed to spend all of eternity on an infinitely long supermarket checkout line.

Human bureaucracies, and most alien ones, are slow by design, their response times slowed to a crawl despite all the technologies we employ to make their progress visible to the naked eye. That’s because they’re still subject to all the delays native to organic life: the mistakes, indecision, the malice, the covering of asses, and the reluctance to transmit even the most urgent message until after a leisurely break for lunch.