Quotes by Ann Leckie

About Ann Leckie:

Ann Leckie is an American author and editor of science fiction and fantasy. She is known principally for her 2013 debut novel Ancillary Justice, which won the 2014 Hugo Award for Best Novel as well as the Nebula Award, the Arthur C. Clarke Award, and the BSFA Award. The sequel Ancillary Sword won the 2015 Locus Award.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

If you’re going to make a desperate, hopeless act of defiance you should make it a good one.

Ann Leckie

Let every act be just, and proper, and beneficial.

Ann Leckie

The single word that directs a person’s fate and ultimately the fates of those she comes in contact with is of course a common subject of entertainments and moralizing stories, but if everyone were to consider all the possible consequences of all o...

Ann Leckie

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 eve...

Ann Leckie

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 rig...

Ann Leckie

Virtue is not a solitary, uncomplicated thing." Good necessitates evil and the two sides of that disk are not always clearly marked. "Virtues may be made to serve whatever end profits you. Still, they exist and will influence your actions. Your choic...

Ann Leckie

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

Ann Leckie

Without feelings insignificant decisions become excruciating attempts to compare endless arrays of inconsequential things. It's just easier to handle those with emotions.

Ann Leckie

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

Ann Leckie

If that’s what you’re willing to do for someone you hate, what would you do for someone you love?

Ann Leckie

Or is identity a matter of fragments held together by convenient or useful narrative, that in ordinary circumstances never reveals itself as a fiction? Or is it really a fiction?

Ann Leckie

Imagine your whole life aimed at conquest, at the spread of Radchaai space. see murder and destruction on an unimaginable scale, but they see the spread of civilisation, of Justice and Propiety, of Benefit for the universe. The death and destruction,...

Ann Leckie

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 ...

Ann Leckie

Pain is a warning,” said Anaander Mianaai. “What would happen if you removed all discomfort from your life? No,” Mianaai continued, ignoring Seivarden’s obvious distress at her words, “I value that moral indignation. I encourage it.

Ann Leckie

Nearly everywhere I've been, popular wisdom has it that the location of humanity's original planet is unknown, mysterious. In fact it isn't, as anyone who troubles to read on the subject will discover, but it very, very, far away from nearly anywhere...

Ann Leckie

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 ...

Ann Leckie

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

Ann Leckie

...it’s so easy, isn’t it, to decide the people you’re fighting aren’t really human. Or maybe you have to do it, to be able to kill them.

Ann Leckie

Civilian casualties?” I asked. “There always are.

Ann Leckie

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

Ann Leckie

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.

Ann Leckie

Author Bio

  • NameAnn Leckie
  • DescriptionAmerican science-fiction author
  • Born1966
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionWriter
  • WorksRadchaai Universe
  • AwardsSydney J. Bounds Award For Best Newcomer; Nebula Award