The only thing driving us on was greed. Fucking greed. The only thing in the universe stronger than fear. - Alastair Reynolds

You can hardly blame them." "Assuming stupidity is an inherited trait, then no, I can't.

The old murals came from the heart," Zima said. "I painted on a huge scale because that was what the subject matter seemed to demand." "It was good work," I said. "It was hack work. Huge, loud, demanding, popular, but ultimately soulless. Just because it came from the heart didn't make it good.

All right, Marius—I get the message. In fact I intercepted it, parsed it, filtered it, decrypted it with the appropriate onetime pad and wrote a fucking two-hundred-page report on it. Satisfied?" "I'm never satisfied, Mishenka. It just isn't in my nature.