Quotes from Martha Wells

I hate having emotions about reality; I'd much rather have them about Sanctuary Moon.

Or Miki was a bot who had never been abused or lied to or treated with anything but indulgent kindness. It really thought its humans were its friends, because that's how they treated it. I signaled Miki I would be withdrawing for one minute. I needed to have an emotion in private.

Disinformation, which is the same as lying but for some reason has a different name, is the top tactic in corporate negotiation/warfare.

I wanted to just sink into my media downloads for a while and pretend I didn't exist.

No hugging," I warned her. It was in our contract.

It was very dramatic, like something out of a historical adventure serial. Also correct in every aspect except for all the facts, like something out of a historical adventure serial.

They were all annoying and deeply inadequate humans, but I didn't want to kill them. Okay, maybe a little.

If you had to take care of humans, it was better to take care of small soft ones who were nice to you and thought you were great because you kept preventing them from being murdered.

There is a lot about what is going on here that I don't understand. But I am participating anyway.

I don't know why, because it's one of those things I'm not contractually obligated to care about.

I love you, armor, and I'm never leaving you again.

It calls itself 'Murderbot,'" Gurathin said. I opened my eyes and looked at him; I couldn't stop myself. From their expressions I knew everything I felt was showing on my face, and I hate that. I grated out, "That was private.

It's wrong to think of a construct as half bot, half human. It makes it sound like the halves are discrete, like the bot half should want to obey orders and do its job and the human half should want to protect itself and get the hell out of here. As opposed to the reality, which was that I was one whole confused entity, with no idea what I wanted to do. What I should do. What I needed to do.

I'm going to mark your cognition level at fifty-five percent." "Fuck you." "Let's make that sixty percent.")

So, I'm awkward with actual humans. It's not paranoia about my hacked governor module, and it's not them; it's me. I know I'm a horrifying murderbot, and they know it, and it makes both of us nervous, which makes me even more nervous. Also, if I'm not in the armor then it's because I'm wounded and one of my organic parts may fall off and plop on the floor at any moment and no one wants to see that.

Right, so the only smart way out of this was to kill all of them. I was going to have to take the dumb way out of this.

I don't want to be human." Dr. Mensah said, "That's not an attitude a lot of humans are going to understand. We tend to think that because a bot or a construct looks human, its ultimate goal would be to become human." "That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard.

I was unimpressed, having heard ART's "villain of a long-running mythic adventure serial" voice before, but all the humans got quiet. Amena shifted uncertainly and looked at me. Then Ratthi whispered, "Was that a subtle threat?" I said, "No. It wasn't subtle.

Sarcasm is the last refuge of the imaginatively bankrupt.

I wasn't sure exactly what "okay" would involve, but I was willing to settle for "unmurdered.

Why yes, I did want to disengage the safety protocols, thanks for asking.

This is why I didn't want to come. I've got four perfectly good humans here and I didn't want them to get killed by whatever took out DeltFall. It's not like I cared about them personally, but it would look bad on my record, and my record was already pretty terrible.

Ugh, emotions.

Yes, the giant transport bot is going to help the construct SecUnit pretend to be human. This will go well.