Quotes from Martha Wells

If people won't be shooting at me what will I be doing?" Maybe I could be her bodyguard. "I think you can learn to do anything you want." She smiled. "We'll talk about that when we get you home.

the big danger to humans is not raiders, angry human-eating fauna, or rogue SecUnits; it's other humans. They kill each other either accidentally or on purpose and you have to clear that up fast because it jeopardizes the bond and determines whether the company has to pay out damages on it or not. SecUnits are ordered by the HubSystem to gather video and audio evidence because nobody trusts the human supervisors, including the other human supervisors.

They're academics, surveyors, researchers, not action-hero explorers from the serials I liked because they were unrealistic and not depressing and sordid like reality.

Attacker is still pulling us toward the wormhole," Mihail announced on comm, not sounding too much like someone who was restraining the urge to scream a little.

I was getting tired of being told what to do. Self-determination was a pain in the ass sometimes but it beat the alternative by a lot.

It would make it harder for me to pretend not to be a person.

She didn't want a corporation's excuse for a trauma support specialist poking around in her emotions.

Kai stepped close, circled to face his prey, and wrapped his hand around the ghoul's throat. "Do mortals just walk into your channel house all the time? Am I one? Am I stupid?" The ghoul choked out, "I didn't know you were a..." "Say it." Kai smiled. "... a demon." "You idiot." Kai leaned closer to whisper, "I'm the demon.

I had options, and I didn't have to decide right away. Which was good, because I still didn't know what I wanted. But maybe I had a place to be while I figured it out.

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.

But then an absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

humans and augmented humans can't sign away their rights to their labor or bodily autonomy in perpetuity; that's like, straight-up illegal.)

The only thing worse than humans infantilizing bots was bots infantilizing themselves.

But I needed them to trust me so I could keep them alive and keep doing my job. The good version of my job, not the half-assed version of my job that I'd been doing before things started trying to kill my clients.

When everything hurts too much, you want to get away from it but you can't, because it's inside you. So you do something drastic because you know it will change everything.

Can I ask you a question?" I never know how to answer this. Should I go with my first impulse, which is always "no" or just give in to the inevitable? I said, "Is it contract-relevant?

There was definitely a problem; the humans needed to recharge or sleep or whatever or their decision-making abilities would be even worse than usual.

Yes, talk to Murderbot about its feelings. The idea was so painful I dropped to 97 percent efficiency.

I'll try to be more accurate. I was indifferent, and vaguely annoyed. Do you believe that?

I wanted to keep me the way I was.

The hostile that had just exploded up out of the ground had a really big mouth, so I felt I needed a really big gun.

I am actually alone in my head, and that's where 90 plus percent of my problems are.

It was like she could see me through my visor, which was a terrifying enough thought that my performance reliability dropped 3 percent.

They don't want me. (Hey, I don't want me, either, but I'm stuck with me.)