A good death. Well, he thought, given that you had to die, why want a bad one? - Iain Banks

I’ve been thinking about the war a lot recently, and I think I’ve decided it’s wrong. We are defeating ourselves in waging it, will destroy ourselves by winning it.

Whether the Dweller List existed or not, everybody appeared to be acting as though it did, and that was all that mattered. It was a bit like money; all about trust, about faith. The value lay in what people believed, not in anything intrinsic.

There is a saying that we provide the machines with an end, and they provide us with the means.