Quotes from Karen Traviss

anything that was aware of its actions was capable of making choices about them.

I don't mind being shot at. It's having a government that lies to me that I hate.

Dom decided that when life returned to normal—even after fourteen years, he had to think that it could—he'd follow Cole's example and treat money as easy come, easy go. People were what mattered. You couldn't replace them, and they didn't earn interest. They just slipped away a day at a time, and you had to make the most of every precious moment.

Gra'tua cuun hett su dralshy'a.

When you can no longer know what your nation or your government stands for, or even where it is, you need a set of beliefs you can carry with you and cling to. You need a core in your heart that will never change.

I've never met a soldier who knew he was a hero. It's not false modesty. They simply decide to do something that they know they must do, usually for there comrades, because if they don't, those people will suffer in some way. For them, that compulsion is far stronger than any fear. The fact we find it exceptional is a sad indictment of the human race. I'd like to live in a world of heroes. If we did, there would be no wars.

It never ceased to amaze Skirata how much simpler it was to buy and sell death than it was to pay taxes.

didn't have a mother or a father, but a stranger willingly chose me to be his son. You had a mother and father, and they let strangers take you. No, General, don't pity me. You're the one who's had the worse deal." It was shocking and it was true. The extraordinary clarity of his assessment hit her so hard that she almost gasped. It told her things she didn't want to know about herself. None of them changed her intentions.

Bury me the ONI way. Fill me up with explosives and use me as a booby trap.

Right then Niner didn't care if she had less idea of guerrilla warfare than a mott. She possessed one fundamental element of leadership that you couldn't teach in a lifetime: she cared about those she led. She had earned her rank on the strength of that alone.

Buy'ce gal, buy'ce tal Vebor'ad ures alit Mhi draar baat'i meg'parjii'se Kote lo'shebs'ul narit A pint of ale, a pint of blood Buys men without a name We never care who wins the war So you can keep your fame —Popular drinking chant of Mandalorian mercenaries—approximate translation, edited for strong language

There is a fine line between neutral and amoral. In fact, there may be no line there at all.

The monsters don't run the gulags and the death camps and the reeducation centers. Regular people do. If they all had the balls to say no, the likes of Halsey, Zhou, or Stalin could never do it all on their own. Could they?

She understood that the Republic faced desperate times. She just wondered how many desperate measures that could justify. Somehow it seemed an affront to the Force to do this to fellow humans, even if they seemed remarkably sanguine about it.

Fett, I have a beautiful daughter...' He shouldn't have said that. Now I'm angry, and I don't often get angry. 'Never use your kids, scumbag. Never.

Leave nothing but footprints, take nothing but memories.

Let's revise the old adage for our times. All that it requires for evil to succeed is that enough lazy, stupid bastards believe everything they're told.

They just seemed to define themselves by not being the other faction.

If you can't take a joke, you shouldn't have joined.

Somehow, though, they managed to ignore the fact that being the dominant species on Earth meant that absolutely nothing about their position was inevitable or beyond their control.

I shouldn't have to do the foot-soldier work, Tahiri. Be my eyes and ears. I'd hate to have to use ch'hala trees. You're smarter than a tree--aren't you? --Darth Caedus to Tahiri Veila

This is how corruption begins. One small concession at a time. One thing you feel you have to do for a good reason.

They had both been raised in complete isolation from the everyday world, with their own set of values and disciplines, not because they had been chosen to be different but because they had been born that way. Their calling was random, genetic—unfair.

Life was a trade-off between loneliness and inevitable peaks of joy or agony.