"I admit, when I picture the scenario, I keep seeing a boy of about, oh, seven. Age of reason and all that. One I could talk to, and do things with. I’m not sure how you get from the single-cell stage to that one, though."

"It only takes one nutcase to decide that you, not he, are the reason his life sucks, and set out to even the score. Nutcases are not in short supply here."

"If nothing else, the arrival of actual children replaces theory with practice. And time to fret with…lack of time to breathe, sometimes."

"So what do you want? Really want, not just think is most prudent. Or worse, think is what I want."

"A contractor, early? Really? Already your tale begins to resemble some drunken hallucination."

"I don’t see people, young or otherwise, as having a right to be idiots. It’s just impractical to try to stop them, unless they’re hurting somebody, and this sport—extreme art?—does not appear to be lethal."

"I expect death will still be cheap and always available, doesn’t take high tech."

"“Never underestimate the human capacity for wishful thinking and willful blindness,” said Miles. Such as a whole society of people who became so wrapped up in avoiding death, they forgot to be alive?"

"“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.”"

"He’d underestimated how much work normal healthy children would take, even with all the help his money and position could buy. For there were some tasks you didn’t want to delegate, because then you’d be missing the best parts."

"His mystery, it seemed, had just split into two. Mystery mitosis. It seemed a retrograde sort of progress."

"History does not so much repeat as echo, I suppose."

"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."

"No, do not let your fears eat the happiness in front of you. Or your grief consume your future? That was harder."

"He supposed he shouldn’t think of it as Quick work, my Lord Auditor, from foreplay to coitus in one afternoon. But who was being screwed? And why, why, why was he being bribed?"

"Misplaced paranoia could be as great a mistake as misplaced faith."

"“Old age,” she said, “is slower than a grenade, but a lot more thorough.”"

"Let me tell you, young man—the dirty little secret of democracy is that just because you get a vote, doesn’t mean you get your choice."

"While not reliable enough to be put in charge of anything more complicated than a dishwasher, they were very easy to convince that all their troubles were someone else’s fault."

"Yani seemed a time-traveler who had found out the hard way that he did not like his destination any better than his point of departure, failed to notice the one common factor was himself, and now could not go back."

"He didn’t exactly have a plan, yet. More of a stab in the dark. He still wasn’t sure what his blade would connect with…"

"Is it still a victory if you don’t get the credit?"

"“’S funny. Piotr, toward the end of his life, looked at our district and only saw how much better it was. All the backbreaking, heartbreaking work he did cleaning up the messes after the war is taken for granted now, or mostly just forgotten. Instead, we look around and only see how much better it could be. And neither of us is wrong, exactly.”"

"Only five days on this benighted world, and already total strangers are trying to kill me. Sadly, it wasn’t even a record."

"Shooting people to keep them from dying had logical flaws obvious to everyone."

"“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."

"One couldn’t fix the past, only the present."

"Don’t underestimate the viciousness of academics when funding is at stake."

"All the worry people expend over not existing after they die, yet nary a one ever seems to spare a moment to worry about not having existed before they were conceived. Or at all. After all, one sperm over and we would have been our sisters, and we’d never have been missed."

"There’s a paradox for you. Although really it’s no more than saying that I’m satisfied with my life. Changing anything would wish people I’ve loved out of existence, and yet…there would have been other people, I suppose. Who now will never be."

"No amount of money can make one stay bought. Who does not freely choose to."

"The most interesting question of history is always, What were these people thinking?"

"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."

"“You know what I like best about you, Ivan Xav?” she asked, newly shy in her illumination. He turned his chin into her hair in an inquiring sort of way. “My shiny groundcar? My Vorish insouciance? My astounding sexual prowess? My…my mother? Dear God, you’re not taking me for the sake of getting my um-stepfather?” “Well, I do like them both very much, but no. What I like best about you, Ivan Xav, is that you’re nice. And you make me laugh.” She smiled now, into his shoulder. “That…doesn’t seem like much.” He sounded a bit taken aback. “Yes,” she sighed, “but consider the context.”"

"Maybe only love gave you more than what you’d dealt for."

"There are two possible ways to solving a dilemma, in justice or elsewhere; begin with the facts, and follow out their logic where it leads one, or begin with the desired outcome, and reason backward to the necessary steps to achieve it."

"“What do you see in that Barrayaran boy, anyway?” the Baronne asked querulously, dodging back despite Tej’s best efforts. “He just doesn’t seem very ambitious.” “Mm,” said Tej. One woman’s defect is another woman’s delight? “I suppose…it’s all the things he sees in me.” That you don’t."

"He consoled himself with the reflection that it was seldom he found himself in company who made him feel this stupid. It was probably good for his soul."

"One’s career might depend solely on one’s own efforts, but marriage was a lottery, and you drew your lot in late adolescence or early adulthood at a point of maximum idiocy and confusion. Perhaps it was just as well. If people were too sensible, the human race might well come to an end. Evolution favored the maximum production of children, not of happiness."

"It’s been a long time since I wagered so much on a single throw. Though if I’m to revisit the desperation of my youth, I want the body back, too."

"Knowledge might not be power, but ignorance was definitely weakness, and so was poverty."

"“Have you determined if it is meant to be a weapon at all?” she said. “We’ve got some very dead people to account for,” Miles pointed out. “That, alas, does not necessarily require a weapon.” Professor Vorthys said. “Carelessness, stupidity, haste, and ignorance are quite as powerfully destructive forces as homicidal intent.”"

"People have some very odd illusions about power. Mostly it consists of finding a parade and nipping over to place yourself at the head of the band. Just as eloquence consists of persuading people of things they desperately want to believe. Demagoguery, I suppose, is eloquence sliding to some least moral energy level."

"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."

"The hostage game is a bad game, a sad and ugly game that’s a lot easier to start than end. The worst versions I’ve seen ended up with neither side in control, or getting anything they wanted. And the people who stand to lose the most in it frequently aren’t even playing."

"He's not even a mad scientist. He's merely a very upset engineer."

"“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.”"

"The parents of the preceding generation had taken galactic sex-selection technologies much too far in their foolish passion for male heirs, and the very sons they’d so cherished—Miles’s contemporaries—had inherited the resulting mating mess. Go to any formal party in Vorbarr Sultana these days, and you could practically taste the damned testosterone in the air, volatilized by the alcohol no doubt."

"She probably felt about matrimony the way Miles felt about needle-grenade launchers."