"It wasn’t, he swore, that he picked up so many women. Compared to Ivan, he was practically celibate. It was just that he never put any down. The accumulation could become downright embarrassing, over a long enough time-span."

"Sometimes, insanity is not a tragedy. Sometimes, it’s a strategy for survival. Sometimes...it’s a triumph."

"Lilly had promised him that her stimulants would buy him six hours of coherence, after which the metabolic bill would be delivered by hulking bio-thugs with spiked clubs, virtual repo-men for his neurotransmitter debt."

"Their good fortune, Mark decided, was divided exactly fifty-fifty; Miles got the good luck, and he got the rest."

"Yet being beaten by your student was the ultimate victory, for a teacher."

"I don’t regret knowing myself, ma’am. I don’t even regret…being myself."

"Mother Nature gives a sense of romance to young people, in place of prudence, to advance the species. It’s a trick—that makes us grow."

"I wouldn’t be lying. I’d just be editing my report for length."

"It wasn’t fair, for people to go and change on him, while his back was turned being dead. To change without giving notice, or even asking permission."

"You can’t just…ignore them out of existence though apparently that’s exactly what you’ve been attempting."

"Well, if you couldn’t be good, at least you could be discreet."

"She’d have no objection to the principle of the thing, but she didn’t exactly approve of the military. She didn’t exactly disapprove, either; she just made it plain that she thought there were better things for intelligent human beings to do with their lives."

"Self-sedation seemed to require more alcohol than it used to, a problem easily remedied."

"“How come they promoted you before me? Who the hell have you been sleeping with?” boiled off of Miles’s lips before he could bite it back down. He hadn’t meant his tone of voice to come out quite that harsh. Ivan shrugged, smirking. “I do my job. And I do it without going around bending all the rules into artistic little origami, shapes, either.”"

"Well, good going with your captaincy. I know you worked for it, even though you pretend not to."

"“If you can’t win, change the game.” Ivan twitched a brow upward. “If there’s no game, isn’t winning a pretty meaningless concept?”"

"Was winning all he really wanted? Or did he still want also to be seen to have won? And by whom?"

"It was never what I wanted to buy that held my heart’s hope. It was what I wanted to be."

"How could you be a Great Man if history brought you no Great Events, or brought you to them at the wrong time, too young, too old? Too damaged."

"“‘Most men,’” he quoted, “‘are of naught more use in their lives but as machines for turning food into shit.’” Ivan cocked an eyebrow at him. “Who said that? Your grandfather?” “Leonardo da Vinci,” Miles returned primly. But was compelled to add, “Grandfather quoted it to me, though.”"

"The last thing a monster wanted was a fellow to follow him around all day long with a mirror."

"Ordinary men and women…die every day. For all sorts of reasons, from random chance to inexorable time. Death is not an Imperial monopoly."

"“You go on. You just go on. There’s nothing more to it, and there’s no trick to make it easier. You just go on.” “What do you find on the other side? When you go on?” She shrugged. “Your life again. What else?” “Is that a promise?” She picked up a pebble, fingered it, and tossed it into the water. The moon-lines bloomed and danced. “It’s an inevitability. No trick. No choice. You just go on.”"

"General. Prudence is one thing. Paranoia that can’t tell friend from foe is quite another."

"The trouble with synopsized information was that it was always so nebulous. The devil was in the details, the raw data; embedded therein were all the tiny clues that fed the intuition demon until it became strong and fat and, sometimes, grew up to become an actual Theory, or even a Proof."

"Suicide wasn’t an option for me anymore, I found. Not like good old adolescent angst. I’m no longer of the secret opinion that death will somehow overlook me if I don’t do something personally about it. And give life…it seems stupid not to make the most of what I do have. Not to mention deucedly ungrateful."

"Never argue with a pedant over nomenclature. It wastes your time and annoys the pedant."

"Their excitement was dampened by a genuine concern for their daughter’s safety and personal happiness, though they are certainly as puzzled how this is to be achieved as any other set of parents."

"I despise internal investigations. Even if you win, you lose."

"“What are you doing?” the Countess asked.… “Just…wrestling with temptation.” Illyan’s voice came back, amused. “Who’s winning?” Miles’s eye followed the cracks in the plaster, overhead. His voice came out high and light, on a sigh: “I think…I’m going for the best two falls out of three.”"

"His mother had often said, When you choose an action, you choose the consequences of that action. She had emphasized the corollary of this axiom even more vehemently: when you desired a consequence you had damned well better take the action that would create it."

"I elect to be…myself."

"If we get straight truth in, maybe we’ve got half a chance of getting good judgment out. No damn chance otherwise, that’s for sure."

"Some prices are just too high, no matter how much you may want the prize. The one thing you can’t trade for your heart’s desire is your heart."

"I was never a mercenary, not ever. Not for one single minute."

"But I am not my father. I don’t have to repeat his mistakes; I can invent bright-new ones."

"“You think he’s a genius?” she said, raising her eyebrows. The high Vor twit?” “I don’t know him quite well enough, yet. But I suspect so, a part of the time.” “Can you be a genius part of the time?” “All the geniuses I ever met were so just part of the time. To qualify, you only have to be great once, you know. Once when it matters.”"

"People complaining about their spouses always looked and sounded so ugly."

"Power corrupts, but we want energy."

"“We’ll never know the whole truth, I suppose,” said Venier. Was that supposed to be a concession? “You can be told the whole truth all day long, but if you won’t believe it, then no, I don’t suppose you ever will never know it.”"

"Then he had accused her of sleeping with her women friends. That had broken something in her at last, some will to desire his good opinion. How could you argue sense into someone who believed something not because it was true, but because he was an idiot? No amount of panicky protestation or indignant denial or futile attempt to prove a negative was likely to help, because the problem was not in the accused but in the accuser. She began then to believe he was living in a different universe, one with a different set of physical laws, perhaps, and an alternate history. And very different people from the ones she met of the same name. Smarmy doppelgangers all."

"To this day she didn’t know if he taken her disgusted refusal to defend herself for a covert admission of guilt."

"Love was long gone, in her. She got by on a starvation diet of loyalty these days."

"How could you tell the difference between not liking sex, and not liking the only person you’d ever done sex with? Yet she was almost desperate for touch, mere affection untainted by the indignities of the erotic."

"Cynicism did not seem nearly so impressively daring to her now as it had when she was twenty."

"If suspicion was the deadliest possible insult, then trust was always right, even if it was mistaken."

"“Does it seem strange…does it give you a very different view of your parents, to see them on vid?” “No,” he said. “It gives me a very different view of holovids.”"

"“They seem more like toys than jewels, but I have to admit, they’re striking.” “Oh, yes, a typical tech toy. High-end this year, everywhere next year, nowhere after that, till the antiquarians’ revival.”"