All Quotes

"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."

"“Is this guy for real?” “He thinks he’s faking it,” said Suegar blandly, “but he’s not.”"

"“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.”"

"“Power is better than revenge,” suggested Miles, not flinching before her snake-cold, set face, her hot coal eyes. “Power is a live thing, by which you reach out to grasp the future. Revenge is a dead thing, reaching out from the past to grasp you.”"

"Men may move mountains, but ideas move men."

"There is a subtle difference between being a prisoner and being a slave. I don’t mistake either for being free. Neither do you."

"“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.”"

"“You don’t have any inhibitions at all, do you?” “Not in combat.”"

"I hate an enemy who doesn’t make mistakes."

"The loonies who sought a glorious death in battle found it very early on. This rapidly cleared the chain of command of the accumulated fools. The survivors were those who learned to fight dirty, and live, and fight another day, and win, and win, and win, and for whom nothing, not comfort, or security, not family or friends or their immortal souls, was more important than winning. Dead men are losers by definition. Survival and victory. They weren’t supermen, or immune to pain. They sweated in confusion and darkness. (And)…they won."

"There are a number of people in the universe I’d be willing to double-cross, but my own wounded aren’t among ’em."

"But at least think about it. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a human being who needed to get laid worse than you do now."

"“You’re pretty damn casual about it.” “Early conditioning. Total strangers trying to kill me make me feel right at home."

"So slight a compression of the lips, and widening of the eyes, to convey so much amusement and contempt."

"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."

"Between justice and genocide there is, in the long run, no middle ground."

"“If I got assassinated now,” he shrugged helplessly, “my father would kill me.”"

"What the hell was HQ thinking of? It seemed extraordinarily obtuse even for them."

"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."

"“I am not schizoid.” Miles bit off. “A little manic-depressive, maybe,” he admitted in afterthought. Galeni’s lips twitched. “Know thyself.” “We try, sir.”"

"“Can you be paranoid about being paranoid?” She smiled sweetly. “If anyone can, it’s you.”"

"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."

"כי בתחבולות תעשה לך מלחמה"

"Don't become a well-rounded person. Well rounded people are smooth and dull. Become a thoroughly spiky person. Grow spikes from every angle. Stick in their throats like a pufferfish."

"You can get a hell of a lot done in a popular medium just by knocking it off with the bullshit."

"Working seriously, improving your taste and perception and understanding, knowing what you are and where you came from, not only improves your work in the present, but gives you a chance of influencing the future and links you to the best work of the past. It gives you a place to take a solid stand."

"Clearly, Mother de Gupta dearly loved motherhood – mostly, for the chance that it offered her to boss around small, helpless people."

"Maybe we were forced to conform to that tradition, for the sake of futurity. But the truth is, fatherhood was good to me. Today, there’s a boy, eight years old, who depends on me for guidance in this world. So now I realise: life can’t be all about me. Me, and my own favourite things: interaction design, aesthetics, robotics, metaphysics... When you and I built a child, that forced me to realise how much this life matters!"

"“But Dad... what if I just beat people up with my baton? Wouldn’t they have to do whatever I say?” Pitar laughed. “That’s been tried. It never works out well.”"

"As tempers rose, a compromise was urged by certain moderates, whom everyone ignored."

"The Dark Age world had all kinds of potential issues that might bother Anita Atkinson: climate crisis, state collapse, financial ruin, mass extinction, catastrophic population dieback. None of those things bothered Anita, though, because she didn’t understand long words."

"It's a bizarre but wonderful feeling, to arrive dead center of a target you didn't even know you were aiming for."

"All great human deeds both consume and transform their doers. Consider an athlete, or a scientist, or an artist, or an independent business creator. In the service of their goals they lay down time and energy and many other choices and pleasures; in return, they become most truly themselves. A false destiny may be spotted by the fact that it consumes without transforming, without giving back the enlarged self. Becoming a parent is one of these basic human transformational deeds. By this act, we change our fundamental relationship with the universe — if nothing else, we lose our place as the pinnacle and end-point of evolution, and become a mere link. The demands of motherhood especially consume the old self, and replace it with something new, often better and wiser, sometimes wearier or disillusioned, or tense and terrified, certainly more self-knowing, but never the same again."

"I've described my usual writing process as scrambling from peak to peak on inspiration through foggy valleys of despised logic. Inspiration is better — when you can get it."

"Women do desperately need models for power other than the maternal."

"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."

"I am a shy person when allowed. I regard a lot of the PR — s, speeches, appearances, media interviews — with much the same dismay as a non-swimming parent would contemplate the prospect of jumping into a raging torrent to rescue their child. One doesn't really see how any good can come of it, but one can't not jump. ("My baby book, help, it is drowning!") I need to get in touch with my surly side more, I suppose, to learn to say "no" to nice people who like me."

"There’s an awful a lot of gaming of the list that goes on in book promotion, where you try to make everybody aware of your book at the same time, try to get them to buy it, get it noticed, get it visible. Which is kind of the opposite of the way I’ve written. I’ve not written bestsellers, I’ve written evergreens. Every book I’ve ever written is still in print."

"She took the story in like some strange, spiked gift, too fragile to drop, too painful to hold."

"Writing is a very redemptive profession, because all of your mistakes can be reclassified as raw material. ... All those things that went awry become material and become more manageable, psychologically and otherwise. ... My five years I spent wandering around in college and left without a degree (to my parents' dismay) — all turned out to be useful to my career ..."

"On the sixth day God saw He couldn’t do it all, it read, so He created engineers."

"Whether you function as welders or inspectors, the laws of physics are implacable lie-detectors. You may fool men. You will never fool the metal. That’s all."

"Were you born inhuman, or did you grow so by degrees—M.S., M.D., Ph.D..."

"Of all the times to pick for this outbreak of idiocy, this has gotta be the worst possible. It’s got to be deliberate. Nothing this fouled up could be by chance."

"The line of logic trailed off in confusion; he turned his thoughts impatiently from it. Mental wheel-spinning, as unproductive as philosophy class in college."

"I don’t know whose judgement is worse, yours or the jerk’s who hired you—"

"Claire, listen to me. The proper response to Bruce isn’t suicide, it’s murder."

"GalacTech’s not God, Claire. You shouldn’t have to sacrifice your firstborn to it."

"There are weapons all around us here, we just don’t recognize them because we call them “tools.”"

"Even soldiers in battle have to be brought to a special state of mental excitement to shoot total strangers."