“Me and my insatiable curiosity. If there's any justice in the world, I was a very good cat in a past life.”

“Do I smell like wild places, still?”Sergei laughed softly and ruffled his hair. “I’d have to compare. And monitor that. Refine my assessment over the next years…”“Ranch has plenty of spare dung. I’ll be sure to roll in it regularly.” Teeth scraped his arm, nipped his skin gently.“I always knew the Alliance was decadent. I intend to see just how decadent.”

“What is it about humans that make us so prone to prejudice?”Blue arches one of his unnaturally colored eyebrows and looks up to meet my gaze. “If we didn’t form prejudices, we wouldn’t be learning from our environment, you dolt. It’s an animal instinct. If a porcupine’s quill gets stuck in your hand once, you won’t be likely to go grabbing it again soon, right?”

“Yeah, he’d yield. He was a bad cut of steak left on the open grill too long, though—the general’s teeth wouldn’t be enough to do the job.”

“Curiosity is the very basis of education and if you tell me that curiosity killed the cat, I say only the cat died nobly. ”

“Awake, my soul! Why should I give hours and days any longer to the vain world, when there is such a world of misery at my very door? Lord, put thine own strength in me; confirm every good resolution; forgive my past long life of uselessness and folly.”

“Human curiosity. Such a very interesting thing. Think of what we owe to it throughout history. It is said to be usually associated with the cat. Curiosity killed the cat. But I should say really that the Greeks were the inventors of curiosity.”