Viola has introduced the threat of posterity and he feels the clamp of social pressure again, even looking death in the piecemeal face.

Only by accepting the other can it truly find diversion and inspiration; only by allowing the universe to be separate from it can it have the infinite variety it craves.

Not really caring about the names of other people was never one of her best qualities, but it was one of her most defining features and she clings to it.

And then We learned of a new thing, new molecules and scents, alien, never before known, and we were curious. We-of-now look back at We-of-Then in our ignorance and wonder if we would have been best not to be curious, and to go on as we always had in contentment. We have never been content, since we exercised our curiosity.

Any of his peers can see the turmoil within him, and they respect it. To care, to be deeply emotionally invested, is a cardinal cultural virtue, after all.

Slime moulds on Earth were a common research subject. Scientists had studied them for centuries because of their self-organizing capability, that enabled a loose mass of individual cells to act as a macro-organism, a predator even, all without any neurology whatsoever.

Paul and his kin are each true to themselves, while knowing that “self” is a thing as boneless and malleable as they are.

He does not need to know the deeper workings of his own mind, indeed he cannot, any more than he can know the precise positioning of his arms: the data is simply too complex to be consciously grasped.

their” when negative, “mine” when positive, and he is fully aware of the mendacity of this and cannot train himself out of it)