Ann Leckie Quotes

Kids are fabulous, but when you're home all day with an infant that can't talk, your brain starts to kind of melt, and I thought, 'I have to do something, or my brain is just going to liquefy.'

The point is, there is no point. Choose your own!

In so much SF, either gender roles are the ones we're used to in the here and now, only transported to the future, or else they're supposedly different, but characters still are slotting into various stereotypes.

This struck me as something of a double bind. Speak and your possession of an opinion was plain, clear to anyone. Refrain from speaking and still this was proof of an opinion. If Captain Rubran were to say, Truly, I have no opinion on the matter, would that merely be another proof she had one?

You are very uncomfortable company, Fleet Captain', observed Station Administrator Celar, her voice bitter and sharp. 'Do you do this sort of thing everywhere you go ?'
'Lately it seems so', I admitted.

The Internet really lets people connect that wouldn't have in the past, and lets conversations happen and connections happen.

Choose my aim, take one step and then the next. It had never been anything else.

Varden's suppurating cuticles," said Seivarden. "Lieutenant,

What would it be like to live 500 years? Healthy years, of course; no one wants to live 500 years in a coma on a respirator. But reasonably healthy all that time? That would be awesome!

I've been surprised at the number of people who were really angry that I tried to convey gender neutrality by using a gendered pronoun.

Libraries are a tremendous and valuable resource, and I'm note sure it's possible to have too many of them.

I love analogies! Let's have one.

Imagine that you dearly love, absolutely crave, a particular kind of food. There are some places in town that do this particular cuisine just amazingly. Lots of people who are into this kind of food hold these restaurants in high regard. But let's say, at every single one of these places, every now and then throughout the meal, at random moments, the waiter comes over and punches any women at the table right in the face. And people of color and/or LGBT folks as well! Now, most of the white straight cis guys who eat there, they have no problem–after all, the waiter isn't punching them in the face, and the non-white, non-cis, non-straight, non-guys who love this cuisine keep coming back so it can't be that bad, can it? Hell, half the time the white straight cis guys don't even see it, because it's always been like that and it just seems like part of the dining experience. Granted, some white straight cis guys have noticed and will talk about how they don't like it and they wish it would stop.

Every now and then, you go through a meal without the waiter punching you in the face–they just give you a small slap, or come over and sort of make a feint and then tell you they could have messed you up bad. Which, you know, that's better, right? Kind of?

Now. Somebody gets the idea to open a restaurant where everything is exactly as delicious as the other places–but the waiters won't punch you in the face. Not even once,

Fuck, you are an ancillary!

Say exactly what we told you to and nothing will go wrong, they said. Well, it all went wrong anyway. And they didn't say anything about this. You'd think they might have, they said lots of other things. Sit up straight, Dlique. Don't dismember your sister, Dlique, it isn't nice. Internal organs belong inside your body, Dlique. She scowled a moment, as though that last one particularly rankled.

I tend to edit some as I go - partly because one of the reasons I don't outline much is that I don't know what the next scene will be until I've actually written the previous scene.

Unity, I thought, implies the possibility of disunity. Beginnings imply and require endings.

I think a lot of times our culture has an attitude toward art and the production of art that separates artists from the rest of us, like making art or music or painting or whatever is some magical thing that you have to be inspired to do, and special people do it.

I do realize the impulse to classify people by the food and art they consume is strong - sometimes I have to remind myself not to do that.

The problem is knowing when what you are about to do will make a difference. I'm not only speaking of the small actions that, cumulatively, over time, or in great numbers, alter the course of events in ways too chaotic or subtle to trace ... if everyone were to consider all the possible consequences of all one's possible choices, no one would move a millimetre, or even dare to breathe for fear of the ultimate results.

Sometimes it feels it's us and Ship against everyone else.

Good necessitates evil and the two sides of that disk are not always clearly marked.

I had learned to be wary whenever a priest suggested that her personal aims were, in fact, God's will.

I've always enjoyed making up stories, especially when I was bored and just sitting around. It got really serious after the children came along.

There is always more after the ending. Always the next morning, and the next. Always changes, losses and gains. Always one step after the other. Until the one true ending that none of us can escape. But even that ending is only a small one, larges as it looms for us. There is still the next morning for everyone else. For the vast majority of the rest of the universe that ending might as well not ever have happened. Every ending is an arbitrary one. Everything ending is from another angle, not really an ending.

When I need to get away from my desk, I tend to take walks or go places. I also like to bead - working with beads to make jewellery.

Please, sir." Tisarwat seemed not to have heard either of them. "We can't leave things the way they are, and I have an idea." That got the translator's full attention. She looked up from the game, frowned intently at Tisarwat. "What's it like? Does it hurt?" Tisarwat only blinked at her. "Sometimes I think I might like to get an idea, but then it occurs to me that it's exactly the sort of thing Dlique would do.

Fortunately or unfortunately, NaNoWriMo requires you to write at a breakneck pace, so I got used to just pushing on through.

The 'science' in 'science fiction' isn't just physics and engineering. It can also be linguistics, anthropology, and psychology.

People don't riot for no reason. And if you're finding you have to deal with the Ychana carefully now, it's because of how they've been treated in the past.

In the nineteen years since then, I had learned eleven languages and 713 songs. I had found ways to conceal what I was - even, I was fairly sure, from the Lord of the Radch herself. I had worked as a cook, a janitor, a pilot. I had settled on a plan of action. I had joined a religious order, and made a great deal of money. In all that time I only killed a dozen people.

Writing books can be very individual - one might strike you as helpful that someone else found useless, or that you might not have appreciated at some other time in your life.

We sit here arguing, we can hardly agree on anything, and then you go straight to my heart like that. We must be family.

So much is metaphor, an inadequately material way to speak of immaterial things.

I'd say my biggest influences are writers like Andre Norton and, particularly when it comes to the Radch, C.J. Cherryh.

You and your ship will immediately familiarize yourselves with the guidelines for dealing with citizen civilians. And you will follow them.

Junk food's not going anywhere. The specifics of what's being snacked on, and what's considered 'junk' and what's 'healthy' will change, of course, depending on what's available.

I've been a fan of Jack Vance since before I was in high school.

The lessons of slushing and editing build up over time, and you're not necessarily thinking about them while you're working, but they're in the back of your mind, probably influencing your choices.

One of the awesome things about being a writer is that I can research nearly anything - tea? Bubblegum? Ants? Neurology? Chocolate? Textile production? It doesn't matter. It's all productive work.

Amaat conceived of light, and conceiving of light also necessarily conceived of not-light, and light and darkness sprang forth. This was the first Emanation, EtrepaBo; Light/Darkness. The other three, implied and necessitated by that first, are EskVar (Beginning/Ending), IssaInu (Movement/Stillness), and VahnItr (Existence/Nonexistence). These four Emanations variously split and recombined to create the universe. Everything that is, emanates from Amaat.

Oh and next time you feel like getting hammered, message me. That was some damn good stuff you puked all over yourself, I think it'd only fair I should get some, too. That hasn't already been through you, I mean.

Weren't many forms of large-scale protest realistically available to most citizens, but one of them was standing in line when you didn't actually need to.

We are all of us only human. We can only forgive so much.

One day, I discovered that a couple of people had written 'fanfic' - stories of their own based on my characters. Just the thought of people thinking that hard and deeply about something I've written is incredible.

Children are all sorts of people, aren't they, and I suppose if I knew more I'd find some I like and some I don't, just like everyone else.

I didn't get where I am by having reasonable goals

Virtue is not a solitary, uncomplicated thing.

Strange, how equally important, just different always seemed to translate into some "equally important" roles being more worthy of respect and reward than others.

Aenda Crav," said Garal, eir tone mild but eir voice still loud enough to carry halfway across the plaza, "and Thers Rathem, and you, Chorem Caellas, you all flew here from the capital this morning so you could shout questions at me in person, but you can't bring yourself to use the name I want to go by. None of you can, apparently, except for District Voice here.

The Romans have provided a lot of writers with a model for various interstellar empires, of course, and no wonder. The Roman Empire is a really good example of a large empire that, in one form or another, functioned for quite a long time over a very large area. And over all that time, there was all sorts of exciting drama – civil wars and assassinations and revolts and bits breaking off and being forced back in ... But I didn't want my future – however fanciful it was – to be entirely European. The Radchaai aren't meant to be Romans in Space.

God's intentions could be discerned by the careful study of even the smallest, most seemingly insignificant events. And the past weeks' events were anything but small and insignificant.

How comforting,' I replied, my voice and my expression steadily serious, 'to think that in these difficult times God is still concerned with the details of the housing assignments. I myself have no time to discuss them just now.

You don't need to know the odds. You need to know how to do the thing you're trying to do. And then you need to do it.

I saw them all, suddenly, for just a moment, through non-Radchaai eyes, an eddying crowd of unnervingly ambiguously gendered people. I saw all the features that would mark gender for non-Radchaai - never, to my annoyance and inconvenience, the same way in each place. Short hair or long, worn unbound (trailing down a back, or in a thick, curled nimbus) or bound (braided, pinned, tied). Thick-bodied or thin-, faces delicate-featured or coarse-, with cosmetics or none. A profusion of colors that would have been gender-marked in other places. All of this matched randomly with bodies curving at breast and hip or not, bodies that one moment moved in ways various non-Radchaai would call feminine, the next moment masculine. Twenty years of habit overtook me, and for an instant I despaired of choosing the right pronouns, the right terms of address. But I didn't need to do that here. I could drop that worry, a small but annoying weight I had carried all this time. I was home.

'Ancillary Sword' picked up the Locus and the BSFA, which surprised the heck out of me.

And it's so easy to just go along. So easy not to see what's happening. And the longer you don't see it, the harder it becomes to see it, because then you have to admit that you ignored it all that time.

Food is an excellent way to do very elegant worldbuilding - the kind that can make a fictional world seem real, like it extends way past the edges of the frame.

People often think they would have made the noblest choice, but when they find themselves actually in such a situation, they discover matters aren't quite so simple.

I will share one of them with you now: most people don't want trouble, but frightened people are liable to do very dangerous things.

She was probably male, to judge from the angular mazelike patterns quilting her shirt. I wasn't entirely certain. It wouldn't have mattered, if I had been in Radch space. Radchaai don't care much about gender, and the language they speak - my own first language - doesn't mark gender in any way.

Are you going to tell me you thought all those bits of trash displayed on the station were real, or important?"
"They're important to us!

I am so glad I'm not Dlique. Did you know she dismembered her sister once? She was bored, she said, and wanted to know what would happen. Well, what did she expect? And her sister's never been the same.

Things happen the way they happen because the world is the way it is.

Memory is an event horizon What's caught in it is gone but it's always there.

One of the nice things about a second book is that your readers already have so much of the introductions on board, they don't have to put all their attention into figuring out the world and can more easily let that play out as a background to the other things you want to do.

The space-dwelling nations of Shis'urna divided the universe into three parts. In the middle lay the natural environment of humans - space stations, ships, constructed habitats. Outside those was the Black - heaven, the home of God and everything holy. And within the gravity well of the planet Shis'urna itself - or for that matter any planet - lay the Underworld, the land of the dead from which humanity had had to escape in order to become fully free of its demonic influence.

In the end it's only ever been one step, and then the next.

Good necessitates evil.

Betrayer! Long ago we promised
To exchange equally, gift for gift.
Take this curse: What you destroy will destroy you.

What, after all, was the point of civilisation if not the well-being of citizens?

I've been thinking about it, since you said it," said Seivarden. No, said Mercy of Kalr. "And I've concluded that I don't want to be a captain. But I find I like the thought that I could be.

I'm Breq, from the Gerentate.

'Star Trek' still - I'm kind of intrigued by the way that the standard foods of various non-humans are sometimes portrayed as downright disgusting.

Ships have feelings.

But I had never noticed that anyone profited from needless spite,

You are so civilized. So polite. So brave coming here alone when you know no one here would dare to touch you. So easy to be all those things, when all the power is on your side.

Good, good. Always remember, Fleet Captain - internal organs belong inside your body. And blood belongs inside your veins.

When I first started writing, I did mostly short fiction, and I'd work on a short story and get near to being done and have no idea what I'd work on next, and then I'd panic.

You can kill me, you mean. You can destroy my sense of self and replace it with one you approve of.

I think I made my first short fiction sale in 2005. I had been writing unsuccessfully before that.

You do have a thousand years' seniority, after all."
"A thousand years' back pay," said a dock inspector, in an awed voice.

We have a saying, where I come from: Power requires neither permission nor forgiveness.

Get some rest. Kalr will bring supper to your quarters. Things will seem better after you've eaten and slept." "Really?" she asked. Bitter and challenging. "Well, not necessarily," I admitted. "But it's easier to deal with things when you've had some rest and some breakfast.

Now, I personally enjoy a really good footnote.

She was born surrounded by wealth and privilege. She thinks she's learned to question that. But she hasn't learned quite as much as she thinks she has, and having that pointed out to her, well, she doesn't react well to it.

I suspect that we get used to particular sorts of stories being presented in particular sorts of ways, and we're so used to interpreting them and understanding what it is they're doing that we think of those forms and styles as faithful, complete depictions of reality.

They lay together in Seivarden's bunk - pressed close, the space was narrow. Ekalu angry - and terrified, heart rate elevated. Seivarden, between Ekalu and the wall, momentarily immobile with injured bewilderment. "It was a compliment!" Seivarden insisted. "The way provincial is an insult. Except what am I?" Seivarden, still shocked, didn't answer. "Every time you use that word, provincial, every time you make some remark about someone's low-class accent or unsophisticated vocabulary, you remind me that I'm provincial, that I'm low-class. That my accent and my vocabulary are hard work for me. When you laugh at your Amaats for rinsing their tea leaves you just remind me that cheap bricked tea tastes like home. And when you say things meant to compliment me, to tell me I'm not like any of that, it just reminds me that I don't belong here. And it's always something small but it's every day.

Writing was something I always as a kid thought would be fabulous and glamorous to be a writer.

Sit up straight, Dlique. Don't dismember your sister, Dlique, it isn't nice. Internal organs belong inside your body, Dlique.

I knew and cared nothing about the will of the gods. I only knew that I would land where I myself had been cast, wherever that would be.

I say what I think," said the woman. "My people don't hide behind masks."
"You certainly do," said Awt, equably. "Your mask is rudeness and offensively plain speech. We only see how you wish to appear, not your true self. Mask or not, Watchman Inarakhat has been more honest than you.

Surely it isn't illegal here to complain about young people these days? How cruel. I had thought it a basic part of human nature, one of the few universally practiced human customs.

And after all, it's the words that matter, the fact that the Rejection was sent and accepted and the Assemblies established, and just by being on display in the System Lareum that copy has become important. It's a real vestige now, even if it's not the one everyone thinks it is. So why should it matter if it's really a forgery?

If anyone who speaks up to criticise something obviously evil is punished merely for speaking, civilisation will be in a bad way.

Children are all sorts of people,

Security is here to protect citizens. You can't do that if you insist on seeing any of them as adversaries.

Governor Giarod was fairly good at not panicking visibly, but, I had discovered, not good at actually not panicking.

I don't think anybody submits their first story and sells right away.

You never knelt to get anywhere. You are where you are because you're fucking capable, and willing to risk everything to do right, and I'll never be half what you are even if I tried my whole life, and I was walking around thinking I was better than you, even half dead and no use to anyone, because my family is old, because I was born better.

Do you still think Mianaai controls the Radchaai through brainwashing or threats of execution? Those are there, they exist, yes, but most Radchaai, like people most places I have been, do what they're supposed to because they believe it's the right thing to do. No one likes killing people."
Strigan made a sardonic noise "No one?"
"Not many," I amended. "Not enough to fill the Radch's warships".