"It wasn't a case of storming heaven. It was a case of letting heaven storm you."

"Apologizing to me again, thought Miles miserably. For me. He keeps telling me I'm all right-and then apologizing. Inconsistent, Father.He shuffled back and forth across the room again, and his pain burst into speech. He flung his words against the deaf door, 'I'll make you take back that apology! I am all right, damn it! I'll make you see it. I'll stuff you so full of pride in me there'll be no room left for your precious guilt! I swear by my word as Vorkosigan. I swear it, Father,' his voice fell to a whisper, 'Grandfather. Somehow, I don't know how . . ."

"Children might or might not be a blessing, but to create them and then fail them was surely damnation."

"And whose fault was it that the boy swallowed down lies, when no one would feed him the truth?"

"You must learn to give, from sufficiency, not only take, from neediness."

"Lately I have come to believe that the principle difference between Heaven and Hell is the company you keep there...."

"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 primly. 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 the end."

"In mysticism, knowledge cannot be separated from a certain way of life which becomes its living manifestation. To acquire mystical knowledge means to undergo a transformation; one could even say that the knowledge is the transformation. Scientific knowledge, on the other hand, can often stay abstract and theoretical. Thus most of today's physicists do not seem to realize the philosophical, cultural and spiritual implications of their theories."

"Miles added it to his life's lessons list. Call it Rule 27B. Never make key tactical decisions while having electro-convulsive seizures."

"Everyone has their folding-point, Miles. Their mortal vulnerability. Some just keep it in a nonstandard location."

"I know girls who pine for it. They like to play dress-up and pretend being Vor ladies of old, rescued from menace by romantic Vor youths. For some reason they never play 'dying in childbirth', or 'vomiting your guts out from the red dysentery', or 'weaving till you go blind and crippled from arthritis and dye poisoning', or 'infanticide'. Well, they do die romantically of disease sometimes, but somehow it's always an illness that makes you interestingly pale and everyone sorry and doesn't involve losing bowel control."

"The dead cannot cry out for justice. It is a duty of the living to do so for them."

"You want to be good. All right, I can understand that. But you have to be careful who you let define your good."

"The strangeness of the Barrayaran government system with all its unwritten customs, pressed on Cordelia not so much as first glance but gradually. And yet it seemed to work for them somehow. They made it work, pretending a government into existence. Perhaps all governments were all consensus fictions at their hearts."

"You don't pay back your parents. You can't. The debt you owe them gets collected by your children, who hand it down in turn. It's a sort of entailment. Or if you don't have children of the body, it's left as a debt to your common humanity. Or to your God, if you possess or are possessed by one.The family economy evades calculation in the gross planetary product. It's the only deal I know where, when you give more than you get, you aren't bankrupted - but rather, vastly enriched."

"Bleeding ulcers run in my family, we give them to each other."

"Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself."

"Poets speak of hope in ladies smiles, but give me a smirk any day, I say."

"One foot in front of the other, wasn't that the grownup way of solving problems? Surely he ought to be a grownup at his age."

"Barrayar is bred in my bones. I cannot shake it, no matter how far I travel. This struggle, God knows, has no honor in it. 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."

"I am not schizoid. A little manic-depressive, maybe.'''Know thyself.'' 'We try, sir."

"For your fourth consoling thought, I would point out that in this venue,' a wave of his finger took in Vorbarr Sultana, and by extension Barrayar, 'acquiring a reputation as a slick and dangerous man, who would kill without compunction to obtain and protect his own, is not all bad. In fact, you might even find it useful.''Useful! Have you found the name of the Butcher of Komarr a handy prop, then, sir?' Miles said indignantly.His father's eyes narrowed, partly in grim amusement, partly in appreciation. 'I've found it a mixed . . . damnation."

"It's true that if your religion failed to deliver a miracle, that a human sacrifice would certainly follow.''Ah...quite. You are a man of acute insight.''That's not insight. That's a personal guarantee."

"What you are is a question only you can answer."

"War is not its own end, except in some catastrophic slide into absolute damnation."

"I think 99 percent of women's lib comes from technology making different kinds of lives possible, and then the social adjustment follows the technology - it doesn't precede it."

"But though you'd never starve your body to wasting and still expect to go on, you starve your heart, yet act as though you can still draw on it forever without the debt ever coming due. If you fall-when you fall, you're going to fall like a starving man."

"Do it for yourself. The universe will be around to collect its cut later."

"I'm afraid even ImpSec has no explanation for women's tastes in men."

"Hunting hawks did not belong in cages, no matter how much a man coveted their grace, no matter how golden the bars. They were far more beautiful soaring free. Heartbreakingly beautiful."

"A true Vor, Miles told himself severely, does not bury his face in his liegewoman's breasts and cry-even if he is at a convenient height for it."

"Well, it is a particular sin to permit grief for what is gone to poison the praise for what blessings remain to us."

"But when he's cut, I bleed."

"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."

"God save me from another such victory."

"I wanted to give you a victory. But by their essential nature triumphs can't be given."

"You? I know you! You trust beyond reason.'She met his eyes steadily. 'Yes. It's how I get results beyond hope. As you may recall."

"It's a bizarre but wonderful feeling, to arrive dead center of a target you didn't even know you were aiming for."

"Real destiny takes everything-the last drop of blood, and strip out your veins to be sure-and gives it back doubled. Quadrupled. A thousand-fold! But you can't give halves. You have to give it all. I know. I swear. I've come back from the dead to speak the truth to you. Real destiny gives you a mountain of life, and puts you on top of it."

"He was shaken by an unwelcome insight. Lives did not add as integers. They added as infinities."

"This wasn't prayer anyway, it was just argument with the gods.Prayer, he suspected as he hoisted himself up and turned for the door, was putting one foot in front of the other. Moving all the same."

"The fourth approved approach for the problem of frontally attacking a guarded wormhole was to shoot the officer who suggested it."

"I need words that mean more than they mean, words not just with height and width, but depth and weight and, and other dimensions that I cannot even name."

"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."

"It was suicide, wasn't it?''In an involuntary sort of way,' said Vorob'yev. 'These Cetagandan political suicides can get awfully messy, when the principal won't cooperate.''Thirty-two stab wounds in the back, worst case of suicide they ever saw?' murmured Ivan, clearly fascinated by the gossip.'Exactly, my lord."

"Not that I haven't leaped up into the blinding light of competence now and then. It's sustaining the altitude that defeats me."

"Events may be horrible or inescapable. Men have always a choice - if not whether, then how, they may endure."

"And this was your friend?' Cordelia raised her eyebrows. 'Seems to me the only difference between your friends and your enemies is how long the stand around chatting before they shoot you."

"Honesty is the only way with anyone, when you'll be so close as to be living inside each other's skins."

"People do get hypnotized by the hard choices and stop looking at the alternatives. The will to be stupid is a powerful force."