And Kelsea wondered suddenly whether humanity ever actually changed. Did people grow and learn at all as the centuries past? Or was humanity merely like the tide, enlightenment advancing and then retreating as circumstances shifted? The most defining characteristic of the species might be lapsed.

— Erika Johansen

Anger was the indulgence of a child, not a queen.

— Erika Johansen

Carlin often said that history was everything, for it was in man’s nature to make the same mistakes over and over.

— Erika Johansen

Even a book can be dangerous in the wrong hands, and when that happens, you blame the hands, but you also read the book.

— Erika Johansen

Even small gestures of kindness have the potential to reap enormous rewards. Only the shortsighted man believes otherwise.

— Erika Johansen

Few things are more dangerous to an egalitarian ideal than the concept of a chosen people, and the divide drawn by the early iteration of God's Church helped to exacerbate the many ideological faults that already underlay the landscape. When they chips were down, Tear's people were ready to turn on each other, and the fall of the Town was very quick, so quick that this historian wonders whether all such communities are not destined to fail. Our species is capable of altruism, certainly, but it is not a game we play willingly, let alone well

— Erika Johansen

I am Death. I come quickly, I come slowly, but I am not cheated.

— Erika Johansen

I'll govern for the good of the governed. I'll make sure every citizen is properly educated and doctored. I'll cease wasteful spending and ease the burden on the poor through redistribution of land and goods and taxation.

— Erika Johansen

I need my own armor, and soon. A silly queen I'll look when I've been slowly flattened into a man.

— Erika Johansen

Pain only disables the weak.

— Erika Johansen