Quotes from Martha Wells

If you bother her again I will break every individual bone in your hand and arm. It will take about an hour.")

She trusts me to take care of myself, even when she doesn't want to. I can't be like a normal consort; I'll just cause trouble. Look what I did at Opal Night, and I wasn't even trying.

My skin was less even than hers and it gets completely regenerated on a regular basis due to me being shot in the face.

I'd watched family dramas before, but I'd never spent much time around human families before coming to Preservation. (Data suggests family dramas bear a less than 10 percent resemblance to actual human families, which is unsurprising and also a relief, considering all the murders. In the dramas, not Mensah's family.)

Giliead stepped up beside Ilias, leaning his hip on the railing. He watched Ander's retreat grimly, saying in a low voice, "He wanted you to ask him first if we could try that cove, instead of just telling the crewman." Ilias snorted. Good warleaders let everyone do their jobs instead of finding excuses to prove they were in charge.

Ratthi had to fold his lips almost completely inside his mouth to keep from reacting.

when I do manage to care, I'm a pessimist.

Oh, shit. Seriously: oh, shit. My organic parts had a reaction that reminded me how lucky I was not to have a digestive system.

He didn't know what he wanted most, a shower or to get his vaccinations renewed.

They spotted another ruin in the late afternoon, this one just a huge, partial circle of metal standing on its side, mounted in a stone base, with weather-worn designs embossed into what was left of the rim.

Frost, stop." Moon had seen groundlings spank their young before and had no idea how that would work with a Raksuran fledgling queen. But he was ready to give it a try.

The dock was in a low orbit, attached to a planet via a structure called a lift tower, which held the shaft for the drop box used to reach the surface.

At least victims of contract labor are free to think their own thoughts. But we tell ourselves that constructs aren't aware of their predicament. What SecUnit makes us realize is that this is not true; they are all aware of what they are and what's been done to them. But the only choice they are ever offered is obedience or pain and death.

I'd just discarded Plan Actually Not All That Terrible and shifted to Plan Approaching Terrible.

It was giving me the etymology of the gesture as I sat down. You would think a SecUnit who had been shot to pieces multiple times, blown up, memory purged, and once partially dismantled by accident wouldn't be on the verge of panic under these circumstances. You'd be wrong.

Ugh, self-determination sucks sometimes.

I've never been on a contract on an uninhabited planet because if I was on the planet on a contract then we'd be inhabiting it.)

Asshole Research Transport

She should go back to her family in her quarters soon. But it's easier here, where everyone knows what happened and no one feels the need to ask questions or is trying to get her to tell them everything is fine and she is exactly the same as she was the day she left. Work is a good excuse.

I needed help. I was rattled, I was still leaking a little, and I hadn't been able to watch any media in what felt like forever.

Leia fixed her with the steely expression that was usually effective on everyone but Han Solo

Si le pasaba algo al transporte, tendrían que volver a pata. Y nadarían, ya que había una masa de agua del tamaño de un océano entre esos dos puntos del mapa.

It makes it sound like the halves are discrete...As opposed to the reality, which was that I was one whole confused entity, with no idea what I wanted to do.

Jade was having her first clutch at the end of the second rain season, and Moon was beginning to have doubts about his ability to survive the process.