543 quotes
It was not a very original period of my life. I won’t say I fell in with bad company—I more hunted them down.
Captain Vorpatril's Alliance (2012)
But I am not my father. I don’t have to repeat his mistakes; I can invent bright-new ones.
Memory (1996)
I don’t think I’m destined to die today. I must be being saved for day after tomorrow.
The Vor Game (1990)
I don’t regret knowing myself, ma’am. I don’t even regret…being myself.
Mirror Dance (1994)
This isn’t a class. This is real life.
Falling Free (1988)
Leadership is mostly a power over imagination, and never more so than in combat. The bravest man alone can only be an armed lunatic. The real strength lies in the ability to get others to do your work.
Shards of Honor (1986)
The building had a strange hermetically-sealed flavor to it, redolent to Miles’s experienced nose as paranoid security in action. Ah, yes, a planet’s embassy is that planet’s soil. Feels just like home.
Brothers in Arms (1989)
A three-planet empire delivered upset snakes by the basket-load to this man’s office, every damned morning. Yeah—for all the talk of men coveting the emperor’s throne, Ivan had never yet heard anyone speak of coveting his desk.
Captain Vorpatril's Alliance (2012)
I’ve got forward momentum. There’s no virtue in it. It’s just a balancing act. I don’t dare stop.
The Warrior's Apprentice (1986)
So what do you want? Really want, not just think is most prudent. Or worse, think is what I want.
Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen (2016)
I’m sorry. I can love you. I can grieve for you, or with you. I can share your pain. But I cannot judge you.
Shards of Honor (1986)
We see the world not as it is, but as we are. ~ Dag Redwing Hickory Bluefield
Passage (Vol. III in Tetralogy) (2008)
"The gods would take him and leave me bereft, and I curse them!"
"I have cursed them for years," said Ista dryly. "Turnabout being fair."
Paladin of Souls (2003)
"You must go home eventually."
"I would throw myself off a precipice first, except that I would land in the arms of the gods, Whom I do not wish to see again."
Paladin of Souls (2003)
The man was embezzling demons?
The Assassins of Thasalon (2021)
It’s so damned useless! The dead hand of the past goes on jerking the strings by galvanic reflex, and we poor puppets dance—nothing is served, not us, not him, not Komarr…
Brothers in Arms (1989)
Your “accidents,” I once noticed, have ways of entangling your enemies that are the green envy of mature and careful strategists. Far too consistent for chance, I concluded it had to be unconscious will.
The Vor Game (1990)
“How did your mother cope, Lord Vorkosigan?”
“You mean, being an egalitarian Betan and all? No problem. She says egalitarians adjust to aristocracies just fine, as long as they get to be the aristocrats.”
Cetaganda (1996)
I’ve always thought—tests are a gift. And great tests are a great gift. To fail the test is a misfortune. But to refuse the test is to refuse the gift, and something worse, more irrevocable, than misfortune. Do you understand what I’m saying?
Shards of Honor (1986)
His mystery, it seemed, had just split into two. Mystery mitosis. It seemed a retrograde sort of progress.
Cryoburn (2010)