Aim high. You may still miss the target, but at least you won't shoot your foot off.

Never do yourself, what you can con professionals into doing for you.

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

The world is made by the people who show up for the job.

All the geniuses I ever met were so just part of the time. To qualify, you only have to be great once, you know. Once when it matters.

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

The will to be stupid is a very powerful force, but there are always alternatives.

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.

Growing up, I have discovered over time, is rather like housework: never finished.

We should have taken our chances back then, when we were young and beautiful and didn't even know it.

If you make it plain you like people, it's hard for them to resist liking you back.

One step at a time,” Vorkosigan returned grimly, “I can walk around the world. Watch me.

One step at a time,” Vorkosigan returned grimly, “I can walk around the world. Watch me.

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.

I've got forward momentum. There's no virtue in it. It's just a balancing act. I don't dare stop.

If the truth doesn't save us, what does that say about us?

When you give each other everything, it becomes an even trade. Each wins all.

Too late, he recalled Miles's dictum that the reward for a job well done was usually a harder job.

The rule for finding plots for character-centered novels, which is to ask: 'So what's the worst possible thing I can do to *this* guy?' And then do it.

Endure pain, find joy, and make your own meaning, because the universe certainly isn't going to supply it.

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

On the sixth day God saw He couldn't do it all, so He created ENGINEERS

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

Experience suggests it doesn't matter so much how you got here, as what you do after you arrive.

Miles clutched Quinn's elbow. "Don't Panic." "I'm not panicking," Quinn observed, "I'm watching you panic. It's more entertaining .

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

I do think, half of what we call madness is just some poor slob dealing with pain by a strategy that annoys the people around him.

If you're trying to take a roomful of people by surprise, it's a lot easier to hit your targets if you don't yell going through the door.

If you're trying to take a roomful of people by surprise, it's a lot easier to hit your targets if you don't yell going through the door.

The Imperial Service could win a war without coffee, but would prefer not to have to.

Money, power, sex ... and elephants.

Well, what is a blessing but a curse from another point of view?

If power was an illusion, wasn't weakness necessarily one also?

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

My dinner party,' Miles grated. 'It's just breaking up.' And sinking. All souls feared lost.

I am not a fate worse than death, dammit!

I'd storm heaven for you, if I knew where it was.

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

[Koudelka] looked back, "You?! I know you! You trust beyond reason!" [Cordelia] met his eyes steadily, "Yes, it's how I get results beyond hope, as you may recall.

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

Miles is... Miles; close to a force of nature, climbing up out of his own pages and escaping subordination to any opinion of mine.

The good face pain. But the great? They embrace it.

I don't confuse greatness with perfection. To be great anyhow is…the higher achievement.

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.

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

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

Suicidal glory is the luxury of the irresponsible.

It was hell to be so tired, and still care.

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.

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.