Yoon Ha Lee Quotes & Sayings

I do my job," Mikodez said, "because after all the trouble I went to get it, it would be irresponsible not to." He — Yoon Ha Lee

The man doesn't look like he belongs in a world of parking tickets and potted begonias and pencil sharpeners. But he can learn, the way you have. — Yoon Ha Lee

sangfroid. Brezan took notes, even though the meeting was being recorded, because otherwise he wouldn't have been able to concentrate on what Muris was — Yoon Ha Lee

Of course, at some point you had to ask yourself how much legitimacy any government had that feared dissension within more than invasion from without, but — Yoon Ha Lee

The problem with authority is that if you leave it lying around, others will take it away from you. — Yoon Ha Lee

All communication is manipulation," Jedao said. "You're a mathematician. You should know that from information theory. — Yoon Ha Lee

What was a shadow, after all, but a shape in the moving world reduced to a projection of possibilities? — Yoon Ha Lee

Once a woman put her hand in a gate and it ate her fingers. A five-legged spider with red eyes crawled out. That woman put in three fingers from her other hand, so that the spider might be complete. Do you have that integrity of purpose, sister? — Yoon Ha Lee

I have loved you in your own language, Kaela thought as she picked up her blades, so softly that we never knew it. Let your language be mine; let me cast my own shadows. — Yoon Ha Lee

You always have a choice," Jedao said. "It's just that most of them are bad. — Yoon Ha Lee

The point of war is to rig the deck, drug the opponent, and threaten to kneecap their family if they don't fold. — Yoon Ha Lee

The silence could have swallowed a star. — Yoon Ha Lee

Taking away people's names denied their power, a lesson Cheris tried not to think about. — Yoon Ha Lee

I wish I knew I was doing this right," Cheris said, "but there's nothing to it but to move forward."

"The only unforgivable sin in war is standing still," Jedao said. "It's better to be doing the wrong thing wholeheartedly than freeze. — Yoon Ha Lee

Above them, stars shine in constellations that Jenny recognizes from the ceiling of her father's house, the ones Mom and Dad helped her put up when she was in third grade. Constellations with names like Fire Truck and Ladybug Come Home, constellations that you won't find in any astronomer's catalogue. — Yoon Ha Lee

After watching the house for a few days, she had concluded that the magician lived alone, but you never knew if someone had a secret lover stashed away. Or a very loud pet. That time with the peacock, for instance. Noisy birds, peacocks. — Yoon Ha Lee

Because war is about people," Jedao said. "Even when you're killing them. — Yoon Ha Lee

It is not true that the dead cannot be folded. Square becomes kite becomes swan; history becomes rumor becomes song. Even the act of remembrance creases the truth. What the paper-folding diagrams fail to mention is that each fold enacts itself upon the secret marrow of your ethics, the axioms of your thoughts. Whether this is the most important thing the diagrams fail to mention is a matter of opinion. — Yoon Ha Lee

It still hurt her to see their poems before her, printed in the curving Yeged-dai script, using Yegedin forms and the images so beloved of the Yegedin: the single pebble, the grasshopper at twilight, the song of a heartbroken lark sitting in a bent tree. — Yoon Ha Lee

Remember that despite the fact that I'm a traitor and mass murderer, one of us is expendable, and it isn't me. — Yoon Ha Lee

The Umbrella Ward is holding except that one blip in that popular game that's going around. Annoying as the Shuos are, they are correct that people can be manipulated through games. — Yoon Ha Lee

This time they're making sure they can hold what they take: conquest is always easier than subjugation. — Yoon Ha Lee

How in the name of ash and talon did that fucking Vidona fit a fucking fungal canister on a fucking bannermoth? — Yoon Ha Lee

In space there are no seasons, and this is as true of the ships that cross the distances between humanity's far-flung homes. But we measure our seasons anyway: by a smile, a silence, a song. — Yoon Ha Lee

One day the rotting remains of their libraries will disintegrate so completely that they will be indistinguishable from the world's wrack of stray eddies and meaningless scribbles, the untide of heat death. The — Yoon Ha Lee

There are too many shapes of love to be counted. One of them is forgiveness. — Yoon Ha Lee

She didn't need ordnance; she needed someone who could work around the problem. And that left her the single undead general in the Kel Arsenal, the madman who slept in the black cradle until the Nirai technicians could discover what had triggered his madness and how to cure him. Shuos Jedao, the Immolation Fox: genius, arch-traitor, and mass murderer. — Yoon Ha Lee

She said you are not the sum of your loyalties, you are the sum of your choices. — Yoon Ha Lee

According to the Shuos," Jedao said, "games are about behavior modification. The rules constrain some behaviors and reward others. Of course, people cheat, and there are consequences around that, too, so implicit rules and social context are just as important. Meaningless cards, tokens, and symbols become invested with value and significance in the world of the game. In a sense, all calendrical war is a game between competing sets of rules, fueled by the coherence of our beliefs. To win a calendrical war, you have to understand how game systems work. — Yoon Ha Lee

We are creatures of fire and water. We wither under a surfeit of light as readily as we wither beneath drowned hopes. — Yoon Ha Lee

The archtraitor and madman Shuos Jedao had appeared as a Ninefox Crowned with Eyes, visionary and strategist, but had proved to be an Immolation Fox. — Yoon Ha Lee

The Kel unsheathed their swords, each tinted differently, blank bars of light. Cheris's ran from blue near the hilt to red at the tip. As they closed with the enemy, numbers blazed to life along the lengths of the blades: the day and the hour of your death, as the Kel liked to say. — Yoon Ha Lee

You can learn about how people think by playing with their lives, but that's inhumane. — Yoon Ha Lee

The city lies at the galaxy's dust-stranded edge, enfolding a moon that used to be a world, or a world that used to be a moon; no one is certain anymore. In the mornings its skies are radiant with clouds like the plumage of a bird ever-rising, and in the evenings the stars scatter light across skies stitched and unstitched by the comings and goings of fire-winged starships. Its walls are made of metal the color of undyed silk, and its streets bloom with aleatory lights, small solemn symphonies, the occasional duel. — Yoon Ha Lee

(Cabbages were a Kel idiosyncrasy. They were adamant about their spiced cabbage pickles.) Appearance-wise — Yoon Ha Lee

I don't know how to live." "But you do," she said. "It's all about the distinguishing moments. It's about going from one to the next, no matter how small the interval of time, or how long. — Yoon Ha Lee

Blue stands for many things at the end of time: for the forgotten, blazing blue stars of aeons past; the antithesis of redshift, the color of uncut veins beneath your skin.
This story is written in blue ink, although you do not know that yet. — Yoon Ha Lee

Dead is dead, Cheris. Do you think it makes any difference whether you're killed by a knife in the back or a bullet? — Yoon Ha Lee