Pen wondered at a world that hanged poor men for thievery, but celebrated great ones. - Lois McMaster Bujold

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 his ease before his own hearth.'

'Events may be horrible or inescapable. Men have always a choice - if not whether, then how they may endure.'

-Bergon and Cazaril talking over the past

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

"And what is your current complaint?"

I don't like Barrayar, I want to go home, my father-in-law wants to murder my baby, half my friends are running for their lives, and I can't get ten minutes alone with my husband, whom you people are consuming before my eyes, my feet hurt, my head hurts, my soul hurts...

It was all too complicated. The poor man just wanted something to put in his blank, not an essay.

"Fatigue," Cordelia managed at last.