543 quotes
“You’re pretty damn casual about it.”
“Early conditioning. Total strangers trying to kill me make me feel right at home.
Brothers in Arms (1989)
You had to admire their honesty. No wonder they did so well at the sciences.
A Civil Campaign (1999)
“So use your initiative!”
“I don’t have initiative. I follow orders, thank you. It’s much safer.”
“Fine, I order you to use your initiative.”
Cetaganda (1996)
Gardens were meant to be seen, smelled, walked through, grubbed in. A hundred objective measurements didn’t sum the worth of a garden; only the delight of its users did that.
A Civil Campaign (1999)
There is no more hollow feeling than to stand with your honor shattered at your feet while soaring public reputation wraps you in rewards. That’s soul-destroying. The other way around is merely very, very irritating.
A Civil Campaign (1999)
Shooting people was such a stupid activity, why should everybody—anybody!—be so impressed? Silver wondered irritably. You would think she had done something truly great, like discover a new treatment for black stem-rot.
Falling Free (1988)
Sometimes, insanity is not a tragedy. Sometimes, it’s a strategy for survival. Sometimes...it’s a triumph.
Mirror Dance (1994)
He carefully ignored his simmering fury. Rage had no place in this. Calculation and implacable action did.
A Civil Campaign (1999)
Heroes. They sprang up around him like weeds. A carrier, he was seemingly unable to catch the disease he spread.
The Warrior's Apprentice (1986)
Right or wrong, what I also saw was that you made an enemy, and left him alive behind you. Great charity. Bad tactics.
The Curse of Chalion (2000)
A skilled soldier kills your enemies, but a skilled duelist kills your allies.
The Curse of Chalion (2000)
Vorreedi, Miles reminded himself, was Intelligence, not Counter-intelligence; curiosity, not paranoia, was his driving force.
Cetaganda (1996)
He felt like a man trying to assemble a jigsaw puzzle of live pieces, that moved and changed shape at random intervals with tiny malicious giggles.
Brothers in Arms (1989)
There were many Temple sorcerers in great Thasalon, which drew all men of ambition to it, whether like flies to honey or to manure a matter of opinion.
The Assassins of Thasalon (2021)
I have taken up the art of bonsai for a hobby. The ancient Japanese are said to have worked on a single tree for as long as a hundred years. Or perhaps it only seemed like it.
Brothers in Arms (1989)
He supposed he shouldn’t think of it as Quick work, my Lord Auditor, from foreplay to coitus in one afternoon. But who was being screwed? And why, why, why was he being bribed?
Cryoburn (2010)
He smiled, recapturing her hand. “A very wise woman once told me—you just go on. I’ve never encountered any good advice that didn’t boil down to that, in the end. Not even my father’s.”
A Civil Campaign (1999)
He must not be in one of his voluble moods. Either you can’t turn him on or can’t turn him off. Well, if there was a choice, taciturn was probably safer for the innocent bystanders than spring-wound.
A Civil Campaign (1999)
For her, this was a metaphor, he reminded himself. Though maybe he was a metaphor too, inside his head with the Black Gang. A metaphor gone metastatic. Metaphors could do that, under enough pressure.
A Civil Campaign (1999)
A hundred objective measurements didn't sum the worth of a garden; only the delight of its users did that. Only the use made it mean something.