Out of the Dead City

Perhaps coming from the royal family, I had easier emotional access to a sense of Toromon’s history. Even at its best, that’s all an aristocracy is good for.

About drafting all the scientific students into the war effort. Maybe the war is good, but, Tomar, I’m working on my own project. All at once, the thing I want most in the world is to be left alone to work on it. And I want you, and I want to have a picnic. I’m nearly at the solution, and to have to stop and work on bomb sightings and missile trajectories…Tomar, there’s a beauty in abstract mathematics that shouldn’t be dulled with that sort of thing.

It means you don’t like where you’ve been, the place where you are is grim, and the only place you see yourself going is not an improvement on what’s gone before.