"If you desire a man to tell you comfortable lies about your prowess, and so fetter any hope of true excellence, I'm sure you may find one anywhere. Not all prisons are made of iron bars. Some are made of feather beds."

"From fried witchetty grubs to gold-plated turnips, when you're a writer you never know what's going to appear on your plate next. It keeps a woman alert, it does."

"I attack both from the logic-side, scribbling outline after outline, and the long-walk relaxed-visualization-side, and while neither alone is enough, the combination synergizes. Which is just a fancy way of saying, "I think about it a lot, day and night.""

"I've always tried to write the kind of book I most loved to read: character-centered adventure."

"Not all books are created equal, and for the special ones, you begin to know it sometimes even before the work is finished, but always by the time you slam that last line home and shriek, "Done! Done!," and fall head-down across your keyboard like the runner from Marathon."

"I have no idea why some of my books draw awards and others don't, except that the ones I spent the least time worrying about other people's response to — that I wrote for myself — seem to do the best of all."

"Reading is an active and elusive experience. Every reader, reading exactly the same text, will have a slightly different reading experience depending on what s/he projects into the words s/he sees, what strings of meaning and association those words call up in his/her (always) private mind. One can never therefore, talk about the quality of a book separately from the quality of the mind that is creating it by reading it, in the only place books live, in the secret mind."

"Parallels, spirals, and reflections are some of my favorite literary patterns."

"I am increasingly convinced that technological culture is the entire root of women's liberation."

"I have a catchphrase to describe my plot-generation technique — "What's the worst possible thing I can do to these people?""

"One of the best things about writing is how it redeems, not to mention recycles, all of one's prior experiences, including — or perhaps especially — the failures."

"Alas, she was dealing with management, not the engineers."

"By far the most dangerous animal on the planet was an invasive species of ape."

"“Everybody has it wrong way round. Parents don’t make children—children make parents. They shape our behavior from the first wail. Mold us into what they need. It can be a pretty rough process, too.” Jole’s eyebrows went up. “I’d not thought of it that way.” It seemed a strangely hopeful notion. “Well, believe it. Though my whole life has been on-the-job training—I don’t know why I thought this should be any different.”"

"“We used to call the biowar intelligence and analysis section at ImpSec HQ the Nightmare Barn,” Miles reminisced. “In a large building full of pale, overcaffeinated men, they had a reputation as being the pastiest and the twitchiest.”"

"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, do not let your fears eat the happiness in front of you. Or your grief consume your future? That was harder."

"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."

"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."

"Babies are just a challenge. Teenagers are a nightmare."

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

"“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.”"

"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?"

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

"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."

"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."

"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…"

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

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

"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.”"

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

"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."

"Everything in the district competes for resources. The best solution is to make more resources."

"In all, in truth, it was a problem for another day, Ivan decided. When life and chance handed you an afternoon as idyllic as this one promised to be, it seemed profoundly ungrateful not to pay attention."

"“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."

"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."