We can only hope to be half as good as Lois

Warning: What follows contains spoilers about Lois McMaster Bujold's Memory.

In a scene where Miles encounters another courier who was wounded in action, he makes the following observation:

It had apparently been Gregor's day to hand out various Imperial recognitions, for a new decoration gleamed on Vorberg's chest, the one for being wounded in the Emperor's Service. Miles had half a jar full of similar ones at home in a drawer; at some point Illyan had stopped issuing them to him anymore, perhaps fearing that Miles's threat to don them all at once sometime was not facetious.

And then, just a few chapters later, when he needs to invoke the full authority of the blood he has shed for the Imperium, Miles does indeed don all of them at once, to an effect "just short of looney."

She does this again and again and again. Each time I re-read Bujold, I see more of the same: symbolism, allegory, and foreshadowing so subtle that it borders on fairy dust.

We can hope to be half as good as she is.