The Vorkosigan Saga is a series of science fiction novels and short stories set in a common fictional universe by American author Lois McMaster Bujold. The first of these was published in 1986 and the most recent in May 2018. Works in the series have received numerous awards and nominations, including five Hugo award wins including one for Best Series.
Vorkosigan Saga, Brothers in Arms (1989)
Context: No, no, never send interim reports. Only final ones. Interim reports tend to elicit orders. Which you must either then obey, or spend valuable time and energy evading, which you could be using to solve the problem.
Vorkosigan Saga, Borders of Infinity (1989)
Context: The loonies who sought a glorious death in battle found it very early on. This rapidly cleared the chain of command of the accumulated fools. The survivors were those who learned to fight dirty, and live, and fight another day, and win, and win, and win, and for whom nothing, not comfort, or security, not family or friends or their immortal souls, was more important than winning. Dead men are losers by definition. Survival and victory. They weren't supermen, or immune to pain. They sweated in confusion and darkness. And … they won.
“If you're trying to keep it a secret, Miles, why are you going around telling everyone"?”
Vorkosigan Saga, A Civil Campaign (1999)
Context: Marta blinked at him with manufactured innocence. "Kareen had it from Mark. I had it from Ivan. Mama had it from Gregor. And Da had it from Pym. If you're trying to keep it a secret, Miles, why are you going around telling everyone"?
“Most people go through their whole lives without killing anybody. False argument.”
Vorkosigan Saga, Brothers in Arms (1989)
Context: You must kill if you expect to survive."
"No you don't," Miles put in. "Most people go through their whole lives without killing anybody. False argument.
Vorkosigan Saga, Brothers in Arms (1989)
Vorkosigan Saga, Barrayar (1991)
Context: But pain... seems to me an insufficient reason not to embrace life. Being dead is quite painless. Pain, like time, is going to come on regardless. Question is, what glorious moments can you win from life in addition to the pain?
Vorkosigan Saga, Borders of Infinity (1989)
“Organization seemed to be the key.”
Vorkosigan Saga, The Warrior's Apprentice (1986)
Context: Organization seemed to be the key. To get huge masses of properly matched men and materials to the right place at the right time in the right order with the swiftness required to even grasp survival — to wrestle an infinitely complex and confusing reality into the abstract shape of victory — organization, it seemed, might even outrank courage as a soldierly virtue.
“The one thing you can't trade for your heart's desire is your heart.”
Vorkosigan Saga, Memory (1996)
Context: Some prices are just too high, no matter how much you may want the prize. The one thing you can't trade for your heart's desire is your heart.
Vorkosigan Saga, Memory (1996)
Context: His mother had often said, "When you choose an action, you choose the consequences of that action." She had emphasized the corollary of this axiom even more vehemently: when you desired a consequence you had damned well better take the action that would create it.
Vorkosigan Saga, Mirror Dance (1994)
Context: It's important that someone celebrate our existence... People are the only mirror we have to see ourselves in. The domain of all meaning. All virtue, all evil, are contained only in people. There is none in the universe at large. Solitary confinement is a punishment in every human culture.
“What a strange world you must live in, inside your head.”
Aftermaths (p. 252)
Vorkosigan Saga, Shards of Honor (1986)
“A person’s things can be a kind of exterior morphology of their mind.”
Aftermaths (p. 247). Note: Aftermaths was originally published as a standalone short story in 1986, but since then has usually been reprinted as a sort of appendix to Shards of Honor, which it follows naturally in the series arc.
Vorkosigan Saga, Shards of Honor (1986)
“I’ve always felt that theists were more ruthless than atheists.”
Source: Vorkosigan Saga, Shards of Honor (1986), Chapter 15 (p. 235)
“Women shouldn’t be in combat, said Vorkosigan, grimly glum. Neither should men, in my opinion.”
Source: Vorkosigan Saga, Shards of Honor (1986), Chapter 14 (p. 223)
Source: Vorkosigan Saga, Shards of Honor (1986), Chapter 9 (p. 141)
“Things going well for your side, are they?”
She asked, oppressed. “We’re becoming nicely overextended. Some people regard that as progress.”
Chapter 8 (p. 129)
Vorkosigan Saga, Shards of Honor (1986)
Source: Vorkosigan Saga, Shards of Honor (1986), Chapter 7 (p. 101)
“So in the physics of the heart, distance is relative; it’s time that’s absolute.”
Source: Vorkosigan Saga, Shards of Honor (1986), Chapter 6 (p. 97)
