New breeding stock. That’s how they see us.

Suzanne Collins, Mockingjay

Consider also:

  1. “His brow furrowed. It irritated him that he should have gone through this hideous process so long without stopping once to question it.”
  2. “plodgering” is a word I’ve coined; it combines plodding, slogging, and soldiering, and I intend it to connote how it feels to be marching day by day in the midst of an uncomfortable and highly unglamorous process of change, all the while doing battle with the elements in myself that would prefer I stay stuck)
  3. “The worst possible relationship between humans and some mystically potent being or beings, at least the worst that I can imagine, would be not symbiosis but parasitism.”
  4. “In the jungle the strong slay the weak until only the strong remain,” said Tanub. “And then the strong prey upon each other?” asked Orne. “That is a quibble for women,” said Tanub. “It’s too bad you feel that way,” said Orne. “When two cultures meet like this they tend to help each other.”
  5. “The cure for the whole misery of poverty is the development of the appreciation of those things that are really worth while.”