Ann Leckie Quotes

Without feelings insignificant decisions become excruciating attempts to compare endless arrays of inconsequential things. It's just easier to handle those with emotions.

Unity, I thought, implies the possibility of disunity. Beginnings imply and require endings.

To be Radchaai is to be civilised.

Let every act be just, and proper, and beneficial.

Good necessitates evil and the two sides of that disk are not always clearly marked.

Falling didn't bother me. I could fall forever and not be hurt. It's stopping that's the problem.

If there was anything any Radchaai considered essential for civilised life, it was tea.

Or is anyone's identity a matter of fragments held together by convenient or useful narrative, that in ordinary circumstances never reveals itself as a fiction? Or is it really a fiction?

Surely it isn't illegal here to complain about young people these days? How cruel. I had thought it a basic part of human nature, one of the few universally practiced human customs.

When one is the agent of order and civilisation in the universe, one doesn't stoop to negotiate. Especially with nonhumans.

Things happen the way they happen because the world is the way it is.

It's the people without the money and the power, who desperately want to live, for those people small things aren't small at all.

What, after all, was the point of civilisation if not the well-being of citizens?

If you're going to make a desperate, hopeless act of defiance you should make it a good one.

Libraries are a tremendous and valuable resource, and I'm note sure it's possible to have too many of them.

Any attempt to list the ten best science fiction novels is doomed to failure.

Good necessitates evil.

The point is, there is no point. Choose your own!

You are so civilized. So polite. So brave coming here alone when you know no one here would dare to touch you. So easy to be all those things, when all the power is on your side

It all goes aroundIt all goes aroundThe planet goes around the sunIt all goes aroundMy mother said it all goes aroundIt all goes aroundThe ship goes around the station

...if anyone who speaks up to criticise something obviously evil is punished merely for speaking, civilisation will be in a bad way.

You are so civilized. So polite. So brave coming here alone when you know no one here would dare to touch you. So easy to be all those things, when all the power is on your side.

What, after all, was the point of civilization if not the well-being of citizens?

If that’s what you’re willing to do for someone you hate, what would you do for someone you love?

Ships have feelings.

I’ve been thinking about it, since you said it, ” said Seivarden. No, said Mercy of Kalr. “And I’ve concluded that I don’t want to be a captain. But I find I like the thought that I could be.