"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."

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

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

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

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

"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?"

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

"“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."

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

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

"“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.”"

"“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.”"

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

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

"“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."

"An honor is not diminished for being shared."

"What a strange world you must live in, inside your head."

"A person’s things can be a kind of exterior morphology of their mind."

"I’ve always felt that theists were more ruthless than atheists."

"I’ve always thought—tests are a gift. And great tests are a great gift. To fail the test is a misfortune. But to refuse the test is to refuse the gift, and something worse, more irrevocable, than misfortune. Do you understand what I’m saying?"

"“Ah, yes. I recall from your file that you are some sort of theist.” said the Emperor. “I am an atheist, myself. A simple faith, but a great comfort to me, in these last days.” “Yes, I have often felt the pull of it myself.”"

"Why shouldn’t a madman dream of being sane?"

"“Women shouldn’t be in combat,” said Vorkosigan, grimly glum. “Neither should men, in my opinion.”"

"“So this word of honor business—you believe he never breaks it?” “Well…” “He does, then.” “I have seen him do so. But the cost was huge.” “He breaks it for a price, then.” “Not for a price. At a cost.” “I fail to see the distinction.” “A price is something you get. A cost is something you lose.”"

"“Well, I don’t hate him. I can’t say I worship him, either.” She paused a long time, and looked up to meet her mother’s eyes squarely. “But when he’s cut, I bleed.”"

"I’m sorry. I can love you. I can grieve for you, or with you. I can share your pain. But I cannot judge you."

"The really unforgivable acts are committed by calm men in beautiful green silk rooms, who deal death wholesale, by the shipload, without lust, or anger, or desire, or any redeeming emotion to excuse them but cold fear of some pretended future. But the crimes they hope to prevent in that future are imaginary. The ones they commit in the present—they are real."

"“Suffering bastard.” “I thought you saw meaning in that sort of thing,” said Vorkosigan. “In the abstract. Most days it’s just stumbling around in the dark with the rest of creation, smashing into things and wondering why it hurts.”"

"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.”"