Your divine should not have used water. It just doesn't hold the attention properly. Wine. Or blood, in a pinch. Some liquid that matters. - Lois McMaster Bujold

Ethan had never found himself clinging to a cusp of human history. The trouble with the position, he found, was that in whatever direction you looked there fell away a glassy, uncontrollable slide down to a strange future you would then have to live in. He had never wanted to pray more, nor been less sure that it would do any good.

“You think he’s a genius?” she said, raising her eyebrows. The high Vor twit?”
“I don’t know him quite well enough, yet. But I suspect so, a part of the time.”
“Can you be a genius part of the time?”
“All the geniuses I ever met were so just part of the time. To qualify, you only have to be great once, you know. Once when it matters.”

What a strange world you must live in, inside your head.