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

War is not its own end, except in some catastrophic slide into absolute damnation. It's peace that's wanted. Some better peace than the one you started with.

Escapist literature gets a bad rap. But I think escape is important for a lot of people in a lot of places.

This is important! But you have to stay absolutely cool. I may be completely off-base, and panicking prematurely." "I don't think so. I think you're panicking post-maturely. In fact, if you were panicking any later it would be practically posthumously. I've been panicking for days.

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

When I go down into the ground at last, as God is my judge, I pray my best-beloved may have better to say of me than, "He didn't hit me."

"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."