2
" The coffee was shockingly, blisteringly good: hot but not hot enough to scald, the paper cup warm in Mahit's palms. It had a rich, earthy taste that wasn't anything like the instant coffee on Lsel, and in some better moment Mahit thought she'd really like to drink it slowly enough to think about all the different qualities of the flavor-
‹There are varieties,> Yskandr said, ‹and they all taste different. It's fantastic. But the important part is the caffeine.>
He was right. Even in the few minutes Mahit had been drinking the coffee, she felt more present, more acute, conscious of a faint thrumming in her skin. "
― Arkady Martine , A Memory Called Empire (Teixcalaan, #1)
3
" Expansion History, and you came to the description of the triple sunrises you can see when you're hanging in Lsel Station's Lagrange point, and you thought, At last, there are words for how I feel, and they aren't even in my language―>
Yes, Mahit says. Yes, she does. That ache: longing and a violent sort of self-hatred, that only made the longing sharper.
We felt that way. "
― Arkady Martine , A Memory Called Empire (Teixcalaan, #1)
4
" Expansion History, and you came to the description of the triple sunrises you can see when you're hanging in Lsel Station's Lagrange point, and you thought, At last, there are words for how I feel, and they aren't even in my language―>
Yes, Mahit says. Yes, she does. That ache: longing and a violent sort of self-hatred, that only made the longing sharper. "
― Arkady Martine , A Memory Called Empire (Teixcalaan, #1)
14
" You pump the dead full of chemicals and refuse to let anything rot—people or ideas or … or bad poetry, of which there is in fact some, even in perfectly metrical verse,” said Mahit. “Forgive me if I disagree with you on emulation. Teixcalaan is all about emulating what should already be dead.” “Are you Yskandr, or are you Mahit?” Three Seagrass asked, and that did seem to be the crux of it: Was she Yskandr, without him? Was there even such a thing as Mahit Dzmare, in the context of a Teixcalaanli city, a Teixcalaanli language, Teixcalaanli politics infecting her all through, like an imago she wasn’t suited for, tendrils of memory and experience growing into her like the infiltrates of some fast-growing fungus. "
― Arkady Martine , A Memory Called Empire (Teixcalaan, #1)
15
" I could have told her the truth,” Mahit said. “Here I am, new to the City, being led astray by my own cultural liaison and a stray courtier.” Twelve Azalea folded his hands together in front of his chest. “We could have told her the truth,” he said. “Her friend, the dead Ambassador, has mysterious and probably illegal neurological implants.” “How nice for us, that everyone lies,” Three Seagrass said cheerfully. "
― Arkady Martine , A Memory Called Empire (Teixcalaan, #1)
18
" IN Teixcalaan, these things are ceaseless: star-charts and disembarkments. Here is all of Teixcalaanli space spread out in holograph above the strategy table on the warship Ascension’s Red Harvest, five jumpgates and two weeks’ sublight travel away from Teixcalaan’s city-planet capital, about to turn around and come home. The holograph is a cartographer’s version of serenity: all these glitter-pricked lights are planetary systems, and all of them are ours. This scene—some captain staring out at the holograph re-creation of empire, past the demarcated edge of the world—pick a border, pick a spoke of that great wheel that is Teixcalaan’s vision of itself, and find it repeated: a hundred such captains, a hundred such holographs. "
― Arkady Martine , A Memory Called Empire (Teixcalaan, #1)
