19 quotes
Anyway, she now realized, the military histories she’d read had left out the most important part; they never told what happened to people’s babies.
Barrayar (1991)
Children might or might not be a blessing, but to create them and then fail them was surely damnation.
Barrayar (1991)
My home is not a place, it is a person, sir.
Barrayar (1991)
Good soldiers never pass up a chance to eat or sleep. They never know how much they’ll be called on to do before the next chance.
Barrayar (1991)
You have a little time yet. You can say a lot in a little time, if you stick to words of one syllable.
Barrayar (1991)
You can’t choose between evil and evil, in the dark, by logic. You can only cling to some safety line of principle.
Barrayar (1991)
Why have these people so blithely handed me the right to risk their lives? God, I hate command.
Barrayar (1991)
I would fight the world for you, but I’m damned if I can figure out how to save you from yourself. Go for it, kid.
Barrayar (1991)
I don’t want power. I just object to idiots having power over me.
Barrayar (1991)
Let me help. Rhymes with I love you, right?
Barrayar (1991)
“For all you Betans seem soft, you have an appalling cold-blooded streak in you.”
“Rational streak, sir. Rationality has its merits. You Barrayarans ought to try it sometime.”
Barrayar (1991)
Our children change us…whether they live or not.
Barrayar (1991)
Stupidity, yes, but not unilateral stupidity. Something this screwed up had to have taken a committee.
Barrayar (1991)
Check your assumptions, Cordelia thought to herself in amusement. In fact, check your assumptions at the door.
Barrayar (1991)
Suicidal glory is the luxury of the irresponsible. We’re not giving up. We’re waiting for a better opportunity to win.
Barrayar (1991)
Any community’s arm of force—military, police, security—needs people in it who can do the necessary evil, and yet not be made evil by it. To do only the necessary and no more. To constantly question the assumptions, to stop the slide into atrocity.
Barrayar (1991)
But pain...seems to me an insufficient reason not to embrace life. Being dead is quite painless. Pain, like time, is going to come on regardless. Question is, what glorious moments can you win from life in addition to the pain?
Barrayar (1991)
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)
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)