“Translator Dlique was saying, very earnestly, “Eggs are so inadequate, don’t you think? I mean, they ought to be able to become anything, but instead you always get a chicken. Or a duck. Or whatever they’re programmed to be. You never get anything interesting, like regret, or the middle of the night last week.”
― Ann Leckie, quote from Ancillary Sword
“For my part,” I replied, “I find forgiveness overrated. There are times and places when it’s appropriate. But not when the demand that you forgive is used to keep you in your place.”
― Ann Leckie, quote from Ancillary Sword
“When they behave properly, you will say there is no problem. When they complain loudly, you will say they cause their own problems with their impropriety. And when they are driven to extremes, you say you will not reward such actions. What will it take for you to listen?”
― Ann Leckie, quote from Ancillary Sword
“Sit up straight, Dlique. Don’t dismember your sister, Dlique, it isn’t nice. Internal organs belong inside your body, Dlique.”
― Ann Leckie, quote from Ancillary Sword
“And it’s so easy to just go along. So easy not to see what’s happening. And the longer you don’t see it, the harder it becomes to see it, because then you have to admit that you ignored it all that time.”
― Ann Leckie, quote from Ancillary Sword
“Memory is an event horizon What’s caught in it is gone but it’s always there.”
― Ann Leckie, quote from Ancillary Sword
“We are all of us only human. We can only forgive so much.”
― Ann Leckie, quote from Ancillary Sword
“Water will wear away stone, but it won’t cook supper. Everything has its own strengths. Said with enough irony, it could also imply that since the gods surely had a purpose for everyone the person in question must be good for something, but the speaker couldn’t fathom what it might be.”
― Ann Leckie, quote from Ancillary Sword
“You take what you want at the end of a gun, you murder and rape and steal, and you call it bringing civilization. And what is civilization, to you, but us being properly grateful to be murdered and raped and stolen from? You said you knew justice when you heard it. Well, what is your justice but you allowed to treat us as you like, and us condemned for even attempting to defend ourselves?”
― Ann Leckie, quote from Ancillary Sword
“If there was anything any Radchaai considered essential for civilised life, it was tea.”
― Ann Leckie, quote from Ancillary Sword
“Life is unpredictable,” I said, “and we are not always the people we think we are. If we’re unlucky, that’s when we discover it. When something like that happens, you have two choices.” Or, more than two, but distilled, they came down to two. “You can admit the error and resolve never to repeat it, or you can refuse to admit error and throw every effort behind insisting you were right to do what you did, and would gladly do it again.”
― Ann Leckie, quote from Ancillary Sword
“Strange, how equally important, just different always seemed to translate into some “equally important” roles being more worthy of respect and reward than others.”
― Ann Leckie, quote from Ancillary Sword
“People don’t riot for no reason.”
― Ann Leckie, quote from Ancillary Sword
“These people are citizens.” I replied, my voice as calm and even as I could make it, without reaching the dead tonelessness of an ancillary. “When they behave properly, you will say there is no problem. When they complain loudly, you will say they cause their own problems with their impropriety. And when they are driven to extremes, you say you will not reward such actions. What will it take for you to listen?”
― Ann Leckie, quote from Ancillary Sword
“It's always for show, Citizen. It is entirely possible to grieve with no outward sign. These things are meant to let others know about it.”
― Ann Leckie, quote from Ancillary Sword
“Still that expressionless face. “Water will wear away stone, sir.” It was a proverb. Or half of one. Water will wear away stone, but it won’t cook supper. Everything has its own strengths. Said with enough irony, it could also imply that since the gods surely had a purpose for everyone the person in question must be good for something, but the speaker couldn’t fathom what it might be.”
― Ann Leckie, quote from Ancillary Sword
“Oh, how I missed the rest of myself.”
― Ann Leckie, quote from Ancillary Sword
“Betrayer! Long ago we promised
To exchange equally, gift for gift.
Take this curse: What you destroy will destroy you.”
― Ann Leckie, quote from Ancillary Sword
“Children are all sorts of people, aren’t they, and I suppose if I knew more I’d find some I like and some I don’t, just like everyone else.”
― Ann Leckie, quote from Ancillary Sword
“Captain,” I said after ten steps, without breaking stride. “I do understand that this is the Genitalia Festival. But when you say genitalia, doesn’t that usually mean genitals generally? Not just one kind?” For all the steps I’d taken, and as far down the corridor as I could see, the walls were hung with tiny penises. Bright green, hot pink, electric blue, and a particularly eye-searing orange.”
― Ann Leckie, quote from Ancillary Sword
“You are so civilized. So polite. So brave coming here alone when you know no one here would dare to touch you. So easy to be all those things, when all the power is on your side.”
― Ann Leckie, quote from Ancillary Sword
“But I had never noticed that anyone profited from needless spite,”
― Ann Leckie, quote from Ancillary Sword
“People don’t riot for no reason. And if you’re finding you have to deal with the Ychana carefully now, it’s because of how they’ve been treated in the past.”
― Ann Leckie, quote from Ancillary Sword
“So much is metaphor, an inadequately material way to speak of immaterial things.”
― Ann Leckie, quote from Ancillary Sword
“And what is civilization, to you, but us being properly grateful to be murdered and raped and stolen from?”
― Ann Leckie, quote from Ancillary Sword
“Do you love randomly?” She blinked in bewilderment. “What?” “Do you love at random? Like pulling counters out of a box? You love whichever one came to hand? Or is there something about certain people that makes them likely to be loved by you?”
― Ann Leckie, quote from Ancillary Sword
“Say exactly what we told you to and nothing will go wrong, they said. Well, it all went wrong anyway. And they didn’t say anything about this. You’d think they might have, they said lots of other things. Sit up straight, Dlique. Don’t dismember your sister, Dlique, it isn’t nice. Internal organs belong inside your body, Dlique.” She scowled a moment, as though that last one particularly rankled.”
― Ann Leckie, quote from Ancillary Sword
“Get some rest. Kalr will bring supper to your quarters. Things will seem better after you’ve eaten and slept.” “Really?” she asked. Bitter and challenging. “Well, not necessarily,” I admitted. “But it’s easier to deal with things when you’ve had some rest and some breakfast.”
― Ann Leckie, quote from Ancillary Sword
“From a child I was taught to forgive and forget, but it's difficult to forget these things, the loss of parents, of children and grandchildren.”
― Ann Leckie, quote from Ancillary Sword
“The tyrant had said our backgrounds were similar, and in some ways they were.”
― Ann Leckie, quote from Ancillary Sword
Ann Leckie
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“What Do You Care What Other People Think?”
― Richard Feynman, quote from Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!
“I demand of you a thousand pardons, monsieur. I am without defence. For some months now I cultivate the marrows. This morning suddenly I enrage myself with these marrows. I send them to promenade themselves - alas! not only mentally but physically. I seize the biggest. I hurl him over the wall. Monsieur, I am ashamed. I prostrate myself.”
― Agatha Christie, quote from El asesinato de Roger Ackroyd
“But just as my philosophy had ceased to interest me as soon as it was formulated into a set of principles so, when I saw myself being imitated, I realised at once what an incubus my aesthetic personality might become if I were to be trapped within it. Imitation changes, not the impersonator, but the impersonated.”
― Peter Ackroyd, quote from The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde
“In the West, we have been withdrawing from our tradition-, religion- and even nation-centred cultures, partly to decrease the danger of group conflict. But we are increasingly falling prey to the desperation of meaninglessness, and that is no improvement at all.”
― Jordan B. Peterson, quote from 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos
“I know, but he must have felt it that way, that evil was an emptiness, a lack of something, not a presence.'
He turned his head fast and looked at me. 'That's what desire is, isn't it? The lack of something.”
― Siri Hustvedt, quote from The Blindfold
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