Breq

My heart is a fish
Hiding in the water-grass
In the green, in the green...
_

"'Breq' is the last remaining fragment of a grief-crazed AI, which has just managed to trigger a civil war. Is that what you wanted?"
"I haven't been crazed with grief for at least ten years. And the civil war was going to happen anyway."
_

I had always been, first and foremost, a weapon.
_

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

“Half your anger is for yourself. But it’s such a monumentally enormous anger even half is quite devastating.”
_

“When they behave properly, you will say there is no problem. When they complain loudly, you will say they cause their own problems with their impropriety. And when they are driven to extremes, you say you will not reward such actions. What will it take for you to listen?”
_

“Can you even imagine what it’s like to know that nothing you can do will make any difference? That nothing you can do will protect the people you love? That anything you could possibly ever do is less than worthless?”
I could. “And yet you do it anyway.”
_

“Will you fight the tyrant with weapons she made, for her own use?”
“We are weapons she made for her own use.”
“We are. But will you pick up every one of those weapons, and use them against her? What will you accomplish? You will be just like her, and if you succeed you’ll have done no more than change the name of the tyrant.”
_

I had never anticipated any sort of existence beyond shooting Anaander Mianaai, if I even managed to do that much. I had had no life to live that mattered, only going relentlessly forward until I couldn't anymore.
_

I'd lost far more and lived. Continued to function, or at least seemed to for anyone who didn't look too closely.
_

"You're not used to being loved. You're used to people being attached to you, or being fond of you, or depending on you, not loving you. Not really. So I think it doesn't occur to you that it's something that might actually happen."
_

"She was half dead and still trying to sing."
_

One, two, my aunt told me
Three, four, the corpse soldier
Five, six, it'll shoot you in the eye
Seven, eight, kill you dead
Nine, ten, break it apart and put it back together