Polly

“I suppose that in general I am not a contrary sort of person,” she said, her voice muffled.

  His eyes were narrowed; he was making no attempt to disguise the fact that he really wanted to peer inside her soul. “And yet you are the daughter of a sweela man,” he murmured. “You cannot be as tame as you appear. There must be passion in you that can be roused by something . There must be something you would fight for, or against.”

  “I am a woman of water,” she replied. “I am more likely to slip away in stealth than to blaze up in wrath.”

  He looked dissatisfied. “All men and women have a little wood and bone in them. Somewhere, from some ancestor. Something that will not back down. Something that will not give way.”

  She turned her right hand palm up and studied the faint lines. “There must be bone in me somewhere, or I could not hold my shape,” she said. “But these days all I can feel is blood.”
― Sharon Shinn, Troubled Waters

“I was so afraid for you, I forgot to be afraid for your enemies. I should have remembered. Dear Captain.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, Barrayar

“Bigotry is one of the oldest and ugliest of trends, so persistent it only counts as a fad because the target keeps changing: Huguenots, Koreans, homosexuals, Muslims, Tutsis, Jews, Quakers, wolves, Serbs, Salem housewives. Nearly every group, so long as it’s small and different, has had a turn, and the pattern never changes—disapproval, isolation, demonization, persecution. Which was one of the reasons it’d be nice to find the switch that turned fads on. I’d like to turn that one off for good.”
― Connie Willis, Bellwether

“Remarkable ploy of the Barrayarans," Mehta expounded thoughtfully. "Concealing an espionage ring under the cover of a love affair. I might even have bought it, if the principals had been more likely."

"Yes," Cordelia agreed cordially, writhing within. "One doesn't expect a thirty-four-year-old to fall in love like an adolescent. Quite an unexpected - gift, at my age. Even more unexpected at forty-four, I gather."

"Exactly," said Mehta, pleased by Cordelia's ready understanding. "A middle-aged career officer is hardly the stuff of romance.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, Shards of Honour