Anyway, she now realized, the military histories she’d read had left out the most important part; they never told what happened to people’s babies. - Lois McMaster Bujold

Honesty is the only way with anyone, when you’ll be so close as to be living inside each other’s skins.

If you can't do what you want, do what you can.

Vorkalloner seemed suddenly less amusing. “Why are you all so anxious to put us in a bottle, anyway?”
“Why, orders,” said Vorkalloner simply, like an ancient fundamentalist who answers every question with the tautology, “Because God made it that way.” Then a little agnostic doubt began to creep over his face. “Actually, I thought we might have been sent out here on guard duty as some kind of punishment,” he joked.
The remark caught Vorkosigan’s humor. “For your sins? Your cosmology is too egocentric, Aristede”