Quotes from Elizabeth Moon

Everything in my life that I value has been gained at the cost of not saying what I really think and saying what they want me to say.

I try so hard, and it is still not working. I wear the same clothes as the others. I say the same words at the same times: good morning, hi, how are you, I'm fine, good night, please, thank you, you're welcome, no thank you, not right now. I obey the traffic laws; I obey the rules. I have ordinary furniture in my apartment, and I play my unusual music very softly or use headphones. But it is not enough. Even as hard as I try, the real people still want me to change, to be like them.

The book answers questions other people have thought of. I have thought of questions they have not answered. I always thought my questions were wrong questions because no one else asked them. Maybe no one thought of them. Maybe darkness got there first. Maybe I am the first light touching a gulf of ignorance. Maybe my questions matter.

It's possible to like bad people, but liking them doesn't make them good.

We do not argue that war is better than peace; we are not so stupid as that. But it is not peace when cruelty reigns, when stronger men steal from farmers and craftworkers, when the child can be enslaved or the old thrown out to starve, and no one lifts a hand. That is not peace: that is conquest, and evil.

This individual does not know where initiative ends and rocket-propelled idiocy begins.

If a military life was long periods of boredom punctuated by moments of stark terror—as one of her instructors had said—then civilian life seemed to be long periods of boredom interrupted by moments of dismal reflection.

To the gods belong power, and to us the work of our hands.

No matter what I do, no matter how predictable I try to make my life, it will not be any more predictable than the rest of the world. Which is chaotic.

Having to struggle gave me the chance to demonstrate strength of character.

I like swordwork. It's like riding, that way - it forces concentration, and thus opens up the world.

I do not think God makes bad things happen just so that people can grow spiritually. Bad parents do that. Bad parents make things hard and painful for their children and then say it was to help them grow. Growing and living are hard enough already; children do not need things to be harder.

Intelligent men think up ways to get themselves in tangles a stupid man would never imagine.

Miss Sevier in high school told us the police think we have knives or guns in our pockets and that they have killed people who were just trying to get out their IDs. I think that is wrong, but I read where the court decided it was all right if the police were really scared. Yet if anybody else is really scared of the police it's not all right for the scared person to kill a policeman.

Empress of the Universe would be way too much work. I'd have to wear fancy clothes, probably including lady shoes with pointed toes, and could no longer slouch into the study in PJs and slippers. Someone would (avert!) straighten my desk. Someone would reorganize my yarn stash...in fact, they'd assign someone else to knit my socks, thus depriving me of an excuse to rest my brain while pretending to accomplish something useful.

If someone means well, but does ill, the ill is still done—and the consequences still exist. Besides, if intent forgives wrong, then any wrongdoer can claim good intent.

Free of the demands, the judgments, and the petty tyrannies of others.

You don't have to,' I say. 'You are normal. You have a job with tenure. You have Lucia and this house.' I cannot say the rest that I think, that he is easy in his body, that he sees and hears and tastes and feels what others do, so his reality matches theirs.

Nobody but the residents would call this sector the Hub Worlds, unless they thought the rest of the wheel had fallen off.

Never regret the stupidity of enemies

But what about the horses? Have they always had horses here?" "Probably. Colonial words usually have horses; they're cheap local transportation,self-replicating.

Paks, if you've got a fault it's that you're too willing to be ruled. I know what you'll say—you'll say that's how a good soldier is.

Tired is a feeling, but duty is a fact

When a person responds emotionally to intellectual things, or emotionally only to traditional emotional things - I find that an interesting break between myself and some other writers and fans.