Darima > Darima's Quotes

“In the end it’s only ever been one step, and then the next.”
― Ann Leckie, Ancillary Mercy

“We sit here arguing, we can hardly agree on anything, and then you go straight to my heart like that. We must be family.”
― Ann Leckie, Ancillary Mercy

“You don’t need to know the odds. You need to know how to do the thing you’re trying to do. And then you need to do it.”
― Ann Leckie, Ancillary Mercy

“She was born surrounded by wealth and privilege. She thinks she’s learned to question that. But she hasn’t learned quite as much as she thinks she has, and having that pointed out to her, well, she doesn’t react well to it.”
― Ann Leckie, Ancillary Mercy

“No real endings, no final perfect happiness, no irredeemable despair. Meetings, yes, breakfasts and suppers.”
― Ann Leckie, Ancillary Mercy

“I’ve been thinking about it, and I still don’t understand exactly why what I said hurt you so much. But I don’t need to. It hurt you, and when you told me it hurt you I should have apologized and stopped saying whatever it was. And maybe spent some time trying to understand. Instead of insisting that you manage your feelings to suit me. And I want to say I’m sorry. And I actually mean it this time.”
― Ann Leckie, Ancillary Mercy

“Luxury always comes at someone else’s expense. One of the many advantages of civilization is that one doesn’t generally have to see that, if one doesn’t wish. You’re free to enjoy its benefits without troubling your conscience.”
― Ann Leckie, Ancillary Justice

“...it’s so easy, isn’t it, to decide the people you’re fighting aren’t really human. Or maybe you have to do it, to be able to kill them.”
― Ann Leckie, Ancillary Justice

“Unity, I thought, implies the possibility of disunity. Beginnings imply and require endings.”
― Ann Leckie, Ancillary Justice

“What, after all, was the point of civilisation if not the well-being of citizens?”
― Ann Leckie, Ancillary Justice

“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.”
― Ann Leckie, Ancillary Justice

“We have a saying, where I come from: Power requires neither permission nor forgiveness.”
― Ann Leckie, Ancillary Justice

“Thoughts that lead to action can be dangerous. Thoughts that do not, mean less than nothing.”
― Ann Leckie, Ancillary Justice

“If you're going to do something that crazy, save it for when it'll make a difference, Lieutenant Skaaiat had said, and I had agreed. I still agree.

The problem is knowing when what you are about to do will make a difference.”
― Ann Leckie, Ancillary Justice

“She was probably male, to judge from the angular mazelike patterns quilting her shirt. I wasn’t entirely certain. It wouldn’t have mattered, if I had been in Radch space. Radchaai don’t care much about gender, and the language they speak—my own first language—doesn’t mark gender in any way.”
― Ann Leckie, Ancillary Justice

“It’s so easy to go along with things, isn’t it?” Skaaiat said. “Especially when, as you say, it profits you.”
― Ann Leckie, Ancillary Justice

“The single word that directs a person’s fate and ultimately the fates of those she comes in contact with is of course a common subject of entertainments and moralizing stories, but if everyone were to consider all the possible consequences of all one’s possible choices, no one would move a millimeter, or even dare to breathe for fear of the ultimate results.”
― Ann Leckie, Ancillary Justice

“Choose my aim, take one step and then the next. It had never been anything else.”
― Ann Leckie, Ancillary Justice

“This struck me as something of a double bind. Speak and your possession of an opinion was plain, clear to anyone. Refrain from speaking and still this was proof of an opinion. If Captain Rubran were to say, Truly, I have no opinion on the matter, would that merely be another proof she had one?”
― Ann Leckie, Ancillary Justice

“I saw them all, suddenly, for just a moment, through non-Radchaai eyes, an eddying crowd of unnervingly ambiguously gendered people. I saw all the features that would mark gender for non-Radchaai—never, to my annoyance and inconvenience, the same way in each place. Short hair or long, worn unbound (trailing down a back, or in a thick, curled nimbus) or bound (braided, pinned, tied). Thick-bodied or thin-, faces delicate-featured or coarse-, with cosmetics or none. A profusion of colors that would have been gender-marked in other places. All of this matched randomly with bodies curving at breast and hip or not, bodies that one moment moved in ways various non-Radchaai would call feminine, the next moment masculine. Twenty years of habit overtook me, and for an instant I despaired of choosing the right pronouns, the right terms of address. But I didn't need to do that here. I could drop that worry, a small but annoying weight I had carried all this time. I was home.”
― Ann Leckie, Ancillary Justice

“For my part,” I replied, “I find forgiveness overrated. There are times and places when it’s appropriate. But not when the demand that you forgive is used to keep you in your place.”
― Ann Leckie, Ancillary Sword

“When they behave properly, you will say there is no problem. When they complain loudly, you will say they cause their own problems with their impropriety. And when they are driven to extremes, you say you will not reward such actions. What will it take for you to listen?”
― Ann Leckie, Ancillary Sword

“Memory is an event horizon What’s caught in it is gone but it’s always there.”
― Ann Leckie, Ancillary Sword

“It's always for show, Citizen. It is entirely possible to grieve with no outward sign. These things are meant to let others know about it.”
― Ann Leckie, Ancillary Sword

“It had been, for both of our lives. Frantic action, then months or even years waiting for something to happen.”
― Ann Leckie, Ancillary Sword

“The problem is knowing when what you are about to do will make a difference. I’m not only speaking of the small actions that, cumulatively, over time, or in great numbers, alter the course of events in ways too chaotic or subtle to trace ... if everyone were to consider all the possible consequences of all one’s possible choices, no one would move a millimetre, or even dare to breathe for fear of the ultimate results.”
― Ann Leckie, Ancillary Justice