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

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

Guard your honor. Let your reputation fall where it will. And outlive the bastards.

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.

Any man can be kind when he is comfortable. I'd always thought kindness a trivial virtue, therefore. But when we were hungry, thirsty, sick, frightened, with our deaths shouting at us, in the heart of horror, you were still as unfailingly courteous as a gentleman at ease before his own hearth.

A weapon is a device for making your enemy change his mind.

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.