All Quotes

"An honor is not diminished for being shared."

"“Don’t be afraid,” she said. “The dead cannot hurt you. They give you no pain, except that of seeing your own death in their faces. And one can face that, I find.” Yes, he thought, the good face pain. But the great—they embrace it."

"Check your assumptions, Cordelia thought to herself in amusement. In fact, check your assumptions at the door."

"You can’t choose between evil and evil, in the dark, by logic. You can only cling to some safety line of principle."

"“What a barbaric custom.” “Well, we could treat crime as a disease, like you Betans. You know what that’s like. At least we kill a man cleanly, all at once, instead of in bits over the years….I don’t know.” “How will they…do it?” “Beheading. It’s supposed to be almost painless.” “How do they know?” His laugh was totally without humor. “A very cogent question.”"

"“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.”"

"Stupidity, yes, but not unilateral stupidity. Something this screwed up had to have taken a committee."

"My home is not a place, it is a person, sir."

"“You think like a soldier, m’lady.” Kly sounded approving. Cordelia wrinkled her brow in dismay. What an appalling compliment. The last thing she wanted was to start thinking like a soldier, playing their game by their rules. The hallucinatory military worldview was horribly infectious, though, immersed in it as she was now."

"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."

"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."

"Our children change us…whether they live or not."

"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."

"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."

"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?"

"You have a little time yet. You can say a lot in a little time, if you stick to words of one syllable."

"Why have these people so blithely handed me the right to risk their lives? God, I hate command."

"Suicidal glory is the luxury of the irresponsible. We’re not giving up. We’re waiting for a better opportunity to win."

"I don’t want power. I just object to idiots having power over me."

"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."

"Let me help. Rhymes with I love you, right?"

"Children might or might not be a blessing, but to create them and then fail them was surely damnation."

"Welcome to Barrayar, son. Here you go: have a world of wealth and poverty, wrenching change and rooted history. Have a birth; have two. Have a name. Miles means “soldier,“ but don’t let the power of suggestion overwhelm you. Have a twisted form in a society that loathes and fears the mutations that have been its deepest agony. Have a title, wealth, power, and all the hatred and envy they will draw. Have your body ripped apart and re-arranged. Inherit an array of friends and enemies you never made. Have a grandfather from hell. Endure pain, find joy, and make your own meaning, because the universe certainly isn’t going to supply it. Always be a moving target. Live. Live. Live."

"To kill a man, it helps if you can first take away his face. A neat mental trick. Handy for a soldier."

"Ask a simple question, get a simple brick wall."

"It’s never too late while you’re breathing."

"What you are is a question only you can answer."

"I’ve got forward momentum. There’s no virtue in it. It’s just a balancing act. I don’t dare stop."

"“You know,” he said as they started back up the corridor, “it might be better if we don’t yell, going in. It’s startling. It’s bound to be a lot easier to hit people if they’re not jumping around and ducking behind things.” “They do it that way on the vids,” Mayhew offered."

"I guess it just doesn’t look very heroic to sneak up behind somebody and shoot them in the back. I can’t help thinking it would be more efficient, though."

"The deadly weapon seemed unnaturally light and easy in his hand. Something that lethal should have more heft, like a broadsword. Wrong, for murder to be so potentially effortless—one ought to at least have to grunt for it."

"Organization seemed to be the key. To get huge masses of properly matched men and material to the right place at the right time in the right order with the swiftness required to even grasp survival—to wrestle an infinitely complex and confusing reality into the abstract shape of victory—organization, it seemed, might even outrank courage as a soldierly virtue."

"Some saw stars, it seemed, and some saw the spaces between them."

"A mercenary who can’t honor his contract when it’s rough as well as smooth is a thug, not a soldier."

"In the long run more mercenaries have had their asses shot off by their contractors than by their enemies."

"Heroes. They sprang up around him like weeds. A carrier, he was seemingly unable to catch the disease he spread."

"“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."

"He should be keeping reality and fantasy separate in his own mind, at least, even while mixing them as much as possible in others’."

"How can I give you up? You’re the mountains and the lake, the memories—you have them all. When you’re with me, I’m at home, wherever I am."

"Acting or reacting, we carry him in us. You can’t walk away from him any more than I can. Whether you travel toward or away, he’ll be the compass. He’ll be the glass, full of subtle colors and astigmatisms, through which all new things will be viewed. I too have a father who haunts me, and I know."

"That idea only makes sense if you don’t think too hard about it."

"Not only was Ivan an idiot, but he generated a telepathic damping field that turned people nearby into idiots too."

"There was no way he could anticipate every contingency. When the time came to leap in faith, whether you had your eyes open or closed or screamed all the way down or not made no practical difference."

"You know, if you’re trying to take a roomful of people by surprise, it’s a lot easier to hit your targets if you don’t yell going through the door."

"Hunting hawks do not belong in cages, no matter how much a man covets their grace, no matter how golden the bars. They are far more beautiful soaring free. Heartbreakingly beautiful."

"The trick of handling horses isn’t to be faster than the horse, or stronger than the horse. That pits your weakness against his strengths. The trick is to be smarter than the horse. That pits your strength against his weakness, eh?"

"Yeah, so I’m short. But wait’ll you see me dance."

"Aren’t family squabbles jolly fun? Bleeding ulcers run in my family, we give them to each other."

"“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.”"

"The fundamental principle was clear: the spirit was to be preferred over the letter, truth over technicalities. Precedent was held subordinate to the judgment of the man on the spot. Alas, the man on the spot was himself. There was no refuge for him in automated rules, no hiding behind the law says as if the law were some living overlord with a real Voice. The only voice here was his own."