Harry Turtledove

Where there’s a will, there’s a lawyer.

During a war, nobody ever showed up on time, except possibly the enemy.

Chester almost said so—almost, but not quite. He and Rita had been married a while now. He’d learned a wise man didn't antagonize his wife over something inherently unprovable, especially when she’d just given him breakfast.

“You're lucky as hell, kid,” Moss said, glad to have something to talk about besides the pounding of his heart. “That's only a scratch, and you'll get yourself a Purple Heart on account of it.”

“If I'd been lucky, they would have missed me,” the lieutenant said, which held more than a little truth. If he'd been unluckier, though, all the infinite cleverness and articulation of that hand would have been smashed to bloody, bony ruin in less than the blink of an eye.

“‘The Confederate state must make up for what everyone else has neglected in this field. It must set race at the center of all life. It must take care to keep itself pure.’”

Mirrors reflecting into other mirrors reflecting into other mirrors yet…Intelligence was that kind of game, a chess match with both players moving at the same time and both of them blindfolded more often than not.

Cincinnatus stared at him. That had to be the most cynical assessment he'd ever heard in his life, and he'd heard a lot of them. But, along with the cynicism, it made a lot more sense than he wished it did.

It was an eminently sensible question. Moss didn't want good sense, though. He wanted to be told what he wanted to hear. That he was thinking like a three-year-old was a telling measure of how tired he was, but he was too tired to realize it.

A wise husband didn’t quarrel even when he was right. Quarreling when you knew you were wrong was a recipe for disaster.

As happened too often in politics, never turned out not to be so very long after all.

If you happened to end up in the wrong place at the wrong instant, you could be the best soldier in the world and it wouldn't matter one goddamn bit. Your next of kin would get a wire from the War Department, and that would be that.

Sometimes convenience counted for more than ideology.