Harry Turtledove

Hopes were only shadows that too often vanished in the pitiless light of reality.

Women are what made me the way I am now. I do not believe the illness is also the cure.

Liv worried less about how important other people thought she was and more about things that really mattered.

Ulric Skakki’s smile was so charming, it made Hamnet distrust him on sight—as if he didn’t already.

Finally the Reichsfuehrer said, "Well, you've given me a good deal to think about. I can hardly deny that. We'll see what comes of it." "The longer we wait, the more trouble we'll have doing it properly," Heydrich warned. "I understand that," Himmler said testily. "I have to make sure I can get it moving without... undue difficulties, though." "As you say, sir!" Heydrich was all obedience, all subordination. Why not? Himmler played the cards close to his chest, but Heydrich was pretty sure he'd won.

He thought she was the most wonderful woman in the world. Of course he did—she agreed with him.

“And if you don’t bet, how do you expect to win?”

Hamnet Thyssen didn’t look at things that way. To him, not betting meant you couldn’t lose. He hadn’t even thought of winning.

"If it works, he'll take the credit," Bokov warned once they were safely outside NKVD headquarters. "Oh, sure," Shteinberg agreed. "But he'd do that anyway." Bokov laughed, not that his superior was joking- or wrong.

“Sometimes I think I don’t know everything that’s going on,” Ulric Skakki said in tones full of mock self-pity.

Count Hamnet reached out and set a consoling hand on his arm. “Don’t worry about it. Sometimes I don’t think you know what‘s going on, either.”

And Ulric was a man of parts, no doubt about it. Just what the parts added up to…Yes, that was a different question.

Himmler steepled his fingers. "Well, Reinhard, what brings you up from Prague today?" His voice was fussy and precise, like a schoolmaster's.

Eisenhower climbed down from his jeep. Two unsmiling dogfaces with Tommy guns escorted him to a lectern in front of the church's steps. The sun glinted from the microphones on the lectern... and from the pentagon of stars on each of Ike's shoulder straps. "General of the Army" was a clumsy title, but it let him deal with field marshals on equal terms. He tapped a mike. Noise boomed out of speakers to either side of the lectern. Had some bright young American tech sergeant checked to make sure the fanatics didn't try to wire explosives to the microphone circuitry? Evidently, because nothing went kaboom. "Today it is our sad duty to pay our final respects to one of the great soldiers of the 20th century. General George Smith Patton was admired by his colleagues, revered by his troops, and feared by his foes," Ike said. If there were a medal for hypocrisy, he would have won it then. But you were supposed tp only speak well of the dead. Lou groped for the Latin phrase, but couldn't come up with it. "The fear our foes felt for General Patton is shown by the cowardly way they murdered him: from behind, with a weapon intended to take out tanks. They judged, and rightly, that George Patton was worth more to the U.S. Army than a Stuart or a Sherman or a Pershing," Eisenhower said. "Damn straight, muttered the man standing next to Lou. He wore a tanker's coveralls, so his opinion of tanks carried weight. Tears glinted in his eyes, which told all that needed telling if his opinion of Patton.