And make them love a version of you. That’s the important part, whatever you do.
-- Melancholia Bishop (Part I (3-75))

Importance: The advice that Thurwar receives from Melancholia here speaks to the complicated series of gestures necessary to survive in a surveillance state like the one that afflicts all of the Links. Melancholia effectively encourages Thurwar to hold on to her own self-conception while presenting a different, more careful face to the world at large, advice Thurwar internalizes to an expert degree and which speaks to the novel's broader reckoning with identity.

Retribution of the same kind promises he was not wrong but rather that he was small. To punish this way is to water a seed.
-- Mari (Part I (3-75))

Importance: This early quote from Mari serves as a condensed articulation of the novel's argument in favor of abolition and rehabilitation rather than punitive justice. It speaks to the recurring idea in the novel that violence merely begets more...