You couldn't be that good and not know it, somewhere in your secret heart, however much you'd been abused into affecting public humility.

Forward momentum only worked as a strategy if one had correctly identified which way was forward.

I miss it every minute, and I have no wish at all to go back.

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.

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

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.

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.