Any government founded on a political or religious agenda more elaborate than “protect the weak, temper the strong” is doomed to tyranny. - Elizabeth Bear

I said, “It just seems weird that I’m in bed with somebody I’ve never met.”
As I said it I realized how foolish it was. Anytime you’re in bed with somebody, you’re in bed with everybody who came before you—everybody who hurt them, healed them, shaped them. All those ghosts are in the room.

Kusanagi-Jones was long past feeling guilt about lying. Conscience was one of the first things to go. If he’d ever had much of one to begin with, the job had burned it out.

Age had not yet defeated her on all fronts, though it was a war of attrition she knew she was fated to lose.