543 quotes
“I have a particular aversion to stalemates. I prefer winning wars to prolonging them.”
She sighed, momentarily drained, tired, old. “I’ve been at war a long time, y’know? After a while even losing a war can start to look preferable to prolonging it.”
The Borders of Infinity (1987)
“It’s true,” agreed Oliver, “that if your religion failed to deliver a miracle, that a human sacrifice would certainly follow.”
“Ah...quite,” Miles gulped. “You are a man of acute insight.”
“That’s not an insight,” said Oliver. “That’s a personal guarantee.”
The Borders of Infinity (1987)
If you could go back in time and change things…
The only moment in time you could change things was the elusive now, which slipped through your fingers as fast as you could think about it.
Komarr (1998)
Now there’s this about cynicism, Sergeant. It’s the universe’s most supine moral position. Real comfortable. If nothing can be done, then you’re not some kind of shit for not doing it, and you can lie there and stink to yourself in perfect peace.
The Borders of Infinity (1987)
“Ivan, one of these days somebody is going to pull out a weapon and plug you, and you’re going to die in bewilderment, crying, ‘What did I say? What did I say?’”
“What did I say?” asked Ivan indignantly.
The Warrior's Apprentice (1986)
The gods...the gods may forgive much, to a truly penitent heart."
Her smile grew bitter as desert brine. "The gods may forgive Ista all day long. But if Ista does not forgive Ista, the gods may go hang themselves."
Paladin of Souls (2003)
She considered seventy-six. It…made no sense. Except that sometime in the past three years, she had switched from counting her years not up from birth, but back from death—a grab-bag of time not growing, but shrinking, use it or lose it.
Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen (2016)
“Hands are to be hired. Design is the test of the intellect.”
“I must disagree. In my experience, hands are integral with brains, almost another lobe for intelligence. What one does not know through one’s hands, one does not truly know.”
Cetaganda (1996)
“I’m planning my course work for the next session at university. I was too late to start this summer, so I’ll begin in the fall. There’s so much to choose from. I feel so ignorant.”
“Educated is what you aim to be coming out, not going in.”
A Civil Campaign (1999)
“When he invited me to one for the Winterfair season, I wasn’t sure if it was hunting or social, and whether I should pack weapons or dresses.”
Lady Vorpatril’s smile sharpened. “Dresses are weapons, my dear, in sufficiently skilled hands.”
Winterfair Gifts (2004)
Surely she was mad. She didn’t feel anything, no grief or remorse, though her heart was racing and her breath came in gasps. A shocky combat-high, that immortal rush that made men charge machine guns. So this was what the war-addicts came for.
Barrayar (1991)
She used to ask, 'Why did the gods give [my son] to me if they were only going to take him away?' Learned Retaka never had an answer. "No," said Pen slowly, "that's backward. The gods do not give us our children. We give our children to the gods."
Knot of Shadows (2021)
“You’re pretty free with that thing.”
“It’s all right. I have a license to stun.”
“I thought that was supposed to be a license to kill.”
Roic grimaced. “That too. But you would not believe all the forms that have to be filled out, afterward.”
Cryoburn (2010)
Reading is an active and elusive experience. Every reader, reading exactly the same text, will have a slightly different reading experience depending on what s/he projects into the words s/he sees, what strings of meaning and association those words call up in his/her (always) private mind. One can never therefore, talk about the quality of a book separately from the quality of the mind that is creating it by reading it, in the only place books live, in the secret mind.
The Vorkosigan Companion (2008)
“A quagmire of delay,” Lady Xarre observed, “has trapped efforts at righting wrongs before.”
The Assassins of Thasalon (2021)
He did not attempt to capture her hands. He did not make a single move that might embarrass them both. Old friends were harder to come by than new lovers.
Oh, my oldest friend.
Still. Always.
Brothers in Arms (1989)
The trouble with synopsized information was that it was always so nebulous. The devil was in the details, the raw data; embedded therein were all the tiny clues that fed the intuition demon until it became strong and fat and, sometimes, grew up to become an actual Theory, or even a Proof.
Memory (1996)
“I didn’t know he had days off,” said Enrique, sounding vaguely puzzled. Naturally enough; Enrique didn’t exactly take breaks either, or at least not scheduled ones, his time being divided into days with too many things to do, and days with far too many things to do—much like her own, Ekaterin reflected ruefully.
The Flowers of Vashnoi (2018)
I cannot emphasize enough that I do not start with a plan or agenda and mechanically manipulate characters and events to carry it out. I set characters in motion, and let them teach me what the book is.
It’s...a transcendental act. Making life. I thought about that when I was carrying Miles. “By this act, I bring one death into the world.” One birth, one death, and all the pain and acts of will between.
Barrayar (1991)