"Vorreedi stated dangerously, “I am not a mushroom, Lieutenant Vorkosigan.” To be kept in the dark and fed on horseshit, right. Miles sighed inwardly."

"“So use your initiative!” “I don’t have initiative. I follow orders, thank you. It’s much safer.” “Fine, I order you to use your initiative.”"

"“Connection? What possible connection?” “We are the connection, Ivan. A couple of Barrayaran backcountry boys come to the big city, and ripe for the plucking. Somebody is using us. And I think somebody... has just made a major mistake in his choice of tools.” Or fools."

"“I made up a lot of instant barbarian folklore—I told ’em a Vor prides himself on self-control, that it’s not considered polite on Barrayar for a man to, you know, before his lady has. Three times. It was considered insulting to her. I stroked, I rubbed, I scratched, I recited poetry, I nuzzled and nibbled and—cripes, my fingers are cramped.” His speech was a bit slurred, too, Miles noticed. “I thought they’d never fall asleep.” Ivan paused; a slow smirk displaced the snarl on his face. “But they were smiling, when they finally did.”"

"“No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy.” Not when the enemy is me."

"He knew now why they called it “falling in love.” There was the same nauseating vertigo of free fall, the same vast exhilaration, the same sick certainty of broken bones upon impact with a rapidly rising reality."

"All in all, it was probably a good thing these youths had no political interests. They were just the sort of people who started revolutions but could not finish them, their idealism betrayed by their incompetence."

"But exile, for no other motive than ease—that would be to give up all hope of honor. The last defeat, with no seed of future victory in it."

"“Things going well for your side, are they?” she asked, oppressed. “We’re becoming nicely overextended. Some people regard that as progress.”"

"East is west, up is down, and being falsely arrested for getting your C.O.’s throat cut is a simplification. I must be on Barrayar."

"He said that permitting private judgments to turn my duty in the smallest matter would be just like getting a little bit pregnant—that the consequences would very soon get beyond me."

"This war nonsense was a great psychological education. That chronometer had to be wrong. Surely it had been a year, and not an hour…"

"No fear trembled his voice. Well, she reflected, perhaps he was not old enough yet to have really come to believe in death after life."

"So in the physics of the heart, distance is relative; it’s time that’s absolute."

"I’m sure we’d all rather be clever than brave."

"Do you know, I think you’d like politics at least on Barrayar. Maybe because it’s so similar to what we call war, elsewhere."

"It’s a moribund body anyway, afflicted with the narrowest conservatism and stuffed with old relics only concerned with protecting their privileges. I’m not sure anything can be done with the Counts in the long run. Perhaps they should finally be allowed to dodder over the brink of extinction."

"“Anybody ever tell you you’re a lunatic?” “Not in this context.”"

"I have an aversion to closed doors anyway. You never know what’s on the other side."

"Vorkalloner seemed suddenly less amusing. “Why are you all so anxious to put us in a bottle, anyway?” “Why, orders,” said Vorkalloner simply, like an ancient fundamentalist who answers every question with the tautology, “Because God made it that way.” Then a little agnostic doubt began to creep over his face. “Actually, I thought we might have been sent out here on guard duty as some kind of punishment,” he joked. The remark caught Vorkosigan’s humor. “For your sins? Your cosmology is too egocentric, Aristede”"

"Captains may come and captains may go, but the administration goes on forever."

"They stared at her curiously and she caught snatches of conversation in two or three languages. It wasn’t hard to guess their content, and she smiled a bit grimly. Youth, it appeared, was full of illusions as to how much sexual energy two people might have to spare while hiking forty or so kilometers a day, concussed, stunned, diseased, on poor food and little sleep, alternating caring for a wounded man with avoiding becoming dinner for every carnivore within range—and with a coup to plan for at the end."

"“We were told the Betans killed you, sir,” he said suspiciously. “Yes, it’s a rumor I’ve had difficulty living down,” said Vorkosigan. “You can see it’s not true.” “Your funeral was splendid,” said Koudelka. “You should have been there.” “Next time, perhaps,” Vorkosigan grinned. “Oh. You know I didn’t mean it that way, sir. Lieutenant Radnov made the best speech.” “I’m sure. He’d probably been working on it for months.”"

"I had a teacher who used to reflect back my questions that way. I thought it was the Socratic method, and it impressed me immensely, until I found out he used it whenever he didn’t know the answer."

"“Seems to me the only difference between your friends and your enemies is how long they stand around chatting before they shoot you.” “Yes,” Vorkosigan agreed, “I could take over the universe with this army if I could ever get all their weapons pointed in the same direction.”"

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

"The old customs are dead, and we keep trying on new ones, like badly fitting clothes."

"Even after four days of oatmeal and blue cheese dressing, they were a disappointment. “Are you sure this isn’t instant boots?” asked Cordelia."

"I suppose my determination to be a soldier stems from that date. I mean the real thing, not the parades and the uniforms and the glamour, but the logistics, the offensive advantage, the speed and surprise—the power. A better-prepared, stronger, tougher, faster, meaner son-of-a-bitch than any who came through that door."

"Save me from that! To pour your life into sons for eighteen or twenty years, and then have the government take them away and waste them cleaning up after some failure of politics—no thanks."

"If it ever came down to exerting power by force, it would mean I’d already lost it."

"Leadership is mostly a power over imagination, and never more so than in combat. The bravest man alone can only be an armed lunatic. The real strength lies in the ability to get others to do your work."

"“Smoke test?...What’s that?”... “It’s an ancient and honorable term for the final step in any engineering project,” Leo explained. “Turn it on, see if it smokes.”"

"He gave himself up to God and pressed the button."

"And what is the most important leg of a three-legged stool? The one that is missing, of course."

"If you ever have to make a choice between learning and inspiration, boy, choose learning. It works more of the time."

"Shooting people was such a stupid activity, why should everybody—anybody!—be so impressed? Silver wondered irritably. You would think she had done something truly great, like discover a new treatment for black stem-rot."

"“I could bring almost nothing—I scarcely knew what to choose.” “Think of the vast amounts of money we shall save on shipping charges, then.”"

"Clearly, you could die while waiting for other people to start your life for you."

"He loathed letting her push his buttons; still, she had a valid point: cover-your-ass was a fundamental rule for survival even of the fittest."

"We make our own luck. And it’s my responsibility to see it’s good and not bad."

"“We’ve run into a problem, Leo.” “But of course. Who ever tracks me down to impart good news?"

"“The trouble with you, Ti,” lectured Leo kindly, “is that you lack teaching experience. If you had, you’d have faith that the most unlikely people can learn the most amazing things.”"

"The quaddies, he reflected, didn’t seem to have a very clear idea of private property. Probably came from a lifetime spent in a communal space habitat, with its tight ecology. Planets were communal in the same way, really, except that their enormous size put so much slack in their systems, it was disguised."

"God’s not here. Somebody’s got to fill in."

"This isn’t a class. This is real life."

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

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