“The world is made by the people who show up for the job.”
“Have you ever heard the phrase, Living well is the best revenge?"
"Where I come from, someone's head in a bag is generally considered the best revenge”
“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.”
“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.”
“History does not so much repeat as echo, I suppose.”
“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?”
“Miles leaned forward and spoke earnestly into the secure holovid recorder. "I just want you to know, Gregor, that if the planet melts down over all this, it wasn't my fault. The trip-wire was laid long before I stumbled across it.”
“I wonder if we should add a box to tick off -- Reason for travel: creepy planetary conquest... no, I suppose not.”
“If only one didn't know that at the secret heart of all such organizations, corporations and governments alike, it still came down to a finite number of fallible people talking to each other . . . ”
“With an air of confession, Jin lowered his voice. "Eggs come out of chickens' butts, you know.”
“Cute-and-furry was always an easier sell than carapaced-and-multilegged, for some obscure reason. Grownups, so unreasonable...”
“When I was a wee little kid," remarked Roic, watching over their shoulders, "there was a time I thought that any skinny old man I saw was my grandfather. It was pretty confusing.”
“Where I come from, someone's head in a bag is generally considered the best revenge.”
“The problem has just suddenly become a lot more interesting. Er, difficult. It's just become a bit more difficult.”
“The world is made by the people who show up for the job,”
“We just try to go from day to day. Surprising where you can end up, that way.”
“You bastards are on the top of Imperial Lord Auditor Miles Vorkosigan's very own shit list now, you bet. But under what name? Only five days on this benighted world, and already total strangers are trying to kill me.”
“Aunt Lorna buys all our shoes big to grow into," Mina explained to Miles-san. "That's why they slip around like that." Lieutenant Johannes, peering doubtfully into the depths of the refrigerator, murmured, "Beer... ?" "Do you like beer, Mina?" Miles-san asked. She shook her head, making her straight black hair swing around her chin. "Thought not, somehow. You'll have to do better, Johannes. Aren't all you attaché fellows supposed to be ImpSec trained? Improvise!”
“Is kidnapping kidnappers still kidnapping?" Miles mused. "Yes," said Roic, unhelpfully. "Not that NewEgypt is likely to bring charges." "Naw, they'd do something else." "I am reminded. I could have Suze freeze and store them for us, I suppose. Technically." Roic gave him the Look. "If push came to shove. As a Kibou-daini problem-solving technique, there seems to be precedent." Roic said nothing, firmly.”
“Have you ever heard the phrase, Living well is the best revenge?" "Where I come from, someone's head in a bag is generally considered the best revenge.”
“Not a problem," Miles-san said. "Then, if everything proves workable, we can go on to the next step." "What is the next step?" asked Consul Vorlynkin, in fascinated tones. He looked like a man staring at a groundcar wreck. In slow motion. That he was in. "Securing Madame Sato." "How?" "I'm going to have to do a spot more research first, to devise the optimum ploy. According to the public records, she's being kept at the NewEgypt facility out in the Cryopolis here in Northbridge, which is actually pretty convenient." Miles-san's lips drew back on a peculiar grin. "It could be just like old times.”
“Taura would have been dead of old age at twenty-standard without the medical intervention that the Dendarii medics and later the Duronas had supplied her. Roic had met her twice, desperately memorably, the first time when she'd attended m'lord's wedding, the second when m'lord and Roic had traveled to Escobar to attend her last days in the Durona hospice.”
“You’ll be surprised to see what can collect in a mattress over the months, over the years. Every day, every night of our lives, we’re leaving little bits of ourselves, flakes of this and that, behind. Where do they go, these bits and pieces of ourselves? Right through the sheets and into the mattress, that’s where! Pillows, too. It’s all the same. He”
“Figures dark beneath their loads pass down the far bank of the river, rendered immortal by the streak of sunset upon their shoulders”
“Everyone laughed their heads off, which is not what literally happened but I like the idea of laughing heads becoming detached from bodies through extreme hilarity, so it was a good way to describe things.”
“Today I was a teacher, employed. True, I was also a teacher untried, but that could also be an advantage. I would learn, by God I’d learn. Nothing was going to stop me.”
“For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams”
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