John

“Coming from a country where mapmakers tend to exclude any landscape feature smaller than, say, Pike’s Peak, I am constantly impressed by the richness of detail on the OS 1:25,000 series. They include every wrinkle and divot of the landscape, every barn, milestone, wind pump and tumulus. They distinguish between sand pits and gravel pits and between power lines strung from pylons and power lines strung from poles. This one even included the stone seat on which I sat now. It astounds me to be able to look at a map and know to the square metre where my buttocks are deployed.”
― Bill Bryson, Notes from a Small Island

“The avatar smiled silkily as it leaned closer to him, as though imparting a confidence. "Never forget I am not this silver body, Mahrai. I am not an animal brain, I am not even some attempt to produce an AI through software running on a computer. I am a Culture Mind. We are close to gods, and on the far side.

"We are quicker; we live faster and more completely than you do, with so many more senses, such a greater store of memories and at such a fine level of detail. We die more slowly, and we die more completely, too. Never forget I have had the chance to compare and contrast the ways of dying.

[...]

"I have watched people die in exhaustive and penetrative detail," the avatar continued. "I have felt for them. Did you know that true subjective time is measured in the minimum duration of demonstrably separate thoughts? Per second, a human—or a Chelgrian—might have twenty or thirty, even in the heightened state of extreme distress associated with the process of dying in pain." The avatar's eyes seemed to shine. It came forward, close to his face by the breadth of a hand.

"Whereas I," it whispered, "have billions." It smiled, and something in its expression made Ziller clench his teeth. "I watched those poor wretches die in the slowest of slow motion and I knew even as I watched that it was I who'd killed them, who at that moment engaged in the process of killing them. For a thing like me to kill one of them or one of you is a very, very easy thing to do, and, as I discovered, absolutely disgusting. Just as I need never wonder what it is like to die, so I need never wonder what it is like to kill, Ziller, because I have done it, and it is a wasteful, graceless, worthless and hateful thing to have to do.

"And, as you might imagine, I consider that I have an obligation to discharge. I fully intend to spend the rest of my existence here as Masaq' Hub for as long as I'm needed or until I'm no longer welcome, forever keeping an eye to windward for approaching storms and just generally protecting this quaint circle of fragile little bodies and the vulnerable little brains they house from whatever harm a big dumb mechanical universe or any conscience malevolent force might happen or wish to visit upon them, specifically because I know how appallingly easy they are to destroy. I will give my life to save theirs, if it should ever come to that. And give it gladly, happily, too, knowing that trade was entirely worth the debt I incurred eight hundred years ago, back in Arm One-Six.”
― Iain M. Banks, Look to Windward

“Lying sprawled uncouthly at the foot of the Red Dragon where the men had tumbled him down, there was a certain splendor about him still. An old man, an old giant, with bright hairs that shone like gold wires in the gray jut of his beard and the mane of wild hair outflung about his head. I recognized him first by the earl's bracelet twisted about his sword arm, for a spear had taken him between the eyes, but as I looked down more closely into the smashed and blood-pooled face, I recognized the cunning iron-bound mouth, drawn back now in a frozen snarl. I recognized above all, I think the greatness that seemed to cling about him still, an atmosphere of the thing that had made him a giant in more than body; this ancient enemy of Ambrosius's. Hengest, the Jutish adventurer who had grown to be a war lord of the Saxon hordes, lying flung down like a tribute at the foot of the British standard that stirred faintly in the night air above him.

That left the son and the grandson to deal with.

'So-o,' Bedwyr said softly. 'Earl Hengest goes at last to his own Storm Lords again. He should have died on a night of tempest, with the lightning leaping from hill to hill, not on a still summer evening with the scent of hawthorn in the air.'

'He was a royal stag,' I said. 'Thank God he is dead.”
― Rosemary Sutcliff, Sword at Sunset

“Of course I would do it again, but I know it would never be quite the same. Despite the best laid plans of the BBC, we ended up bustling, hurrying, rushing, improvising to get ourselves home only by the skin of our teeth. And that's what made it worth doing. The smoother the journey the duller it would have been.”
― Michael Palin, Around the World in 80 Days: Companion to the Pbs Series