Lois McMaster Bujold

He sat back beside her, and took her in his arms.  “And this is only the beginning.  Every month, every week, there will be some other impossible thing.  What’s going to be left of me after fifteen years of this?  A hust, like that thing we buried three monts ago, praying with his last breath that there may be no God?  Or a power-corrupted monstrosity, like his son, so infected it could only be sterilized by plasma arc?  Or something even worse?”

…

She sighed.  “You can’t choose between evil and evil, in the dark, by logic.  You can only cling to some safety line of principle.  I can’t make your decision.  But whatever principles you choose now are going to be your safety lines, to carry you forward.  And for the sake of your people, they’re going to have to be consistent ones.”

Chapter 7 – Barrayar by Lois McMaster Bujold

My initial foray in to the Vorkosigan Saga was not so great and I was worried but suspicious that my reaction was mainly the result of a book in the middle of a series winning a Hugo.  After finally finishing Barrayar a couple days ago, any fears I may have had about the rest of the series were laid to rest.  The second part of this quote has stuck with me for a while now.  Probably not the most profound thing you’ve ever read, but I was making some hard decisions at the time I read it and it had a kind of centering effect on me.  Regardless, the entire book was a much better experience and I was really in a Vorkosigan groove by the time I finished.  Then today I heard about an interview she did for the Geeks Guide to the Galaxy podcast recently in which she had some other awesome things to say.  I have to admit I’m really turning around a lot of my initial opinions about this author…