If we get straight truth in, maybe we’ve got half a chance of getting good judgment out. No damn chance otherwise, that’s for sure. - Lois McMaster Bujold

Everybody has it wrong way round. Parents don't make children — children make parents. They shape our behavior from the first wail. Mold us into what they need. It can be a pretty rough process, too

It was lately suggested to me, by a man with longer experience of the gods than I can rightly imagine, that the reason the gods do not show our paths more plainly is that They do not know either. I haven’t decided if I find this reassuring or the reverse. It does hint they do not torment us solely for Their amusement, at least.

When a normal ensign looked at his commander, he ought to see a godlike being, not a, a...future subordinate. New ensigns were supposed to be a subhuman species anyway.