“So it’s false.” “What isn’t?” “Intellectual achievement. The exercise of skill. Human feeling.” — Iain M. Banks

“One of the advantages of having laws is the pleasure one may take in breaking them. We here are not children, Mr. Gurgeh.” Hamin waved the pipestem round the tables of people. “Rules and laws exist only because we take pleasure in doing what they forbid, but as long as most of the people obey such proscriptions most of the time, they have done their job; blind obedience would imply we are—ha!”—Hamin chuckled and pointed at the drone with the pipe—“no more than robots!”

He looked up from it at the stars again, and the view was warped and distorted by something in his eyes, which at first he thought was rain.

The news team, and Hamin, seemed well pleased. “You should have been an actor, Jernau Gurgeh,” Hamin told him.

Gurgeh assumed this was intended as a compliment.