Lois McMaster Bujold quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Lois McMaster Bujold

Lois McMaster Bujold Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from Lois McMaster Bujold on Wise Famous Quotes.

I believe," she said slowly at last, "that the tormented are very close to God. I'm sorry, Sergeant." He

Her smile grew bitter as desert brine. The gods may forgive Ista all day long. But if Ista does not forgive Ista, the gods may go hang themselves.

When I go down into the ground at last, as God is my judge, I pray my best-beloved may have better to say of me than, "He didn't hit me."

A stunning first impression was not the same thing as love at first sight. But surely it was an invitation to consider the matter.

No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy. Not when the enemy is me.

That civet-jasmine blend you're wearing tonight absolutely clashes with the third-level formal style of your dress, you know.

There is a sad disconnectedness that overcomes a library when its owner is gone.

Aim high. You may still miss the target, but at least you won't shoot your foot off.

So you're saying that I could die at any moment!" "Yes. And this is different from your life yesterday in what way?

The gods' most savage curses come upon us as answers to our own prayers. Prayer is a dangerous business.

It's a bizarre but wonderful feeling, to arrive dead center of a target you didn't even know you were aiming for.

Hi, I'm a hero, but I can't tell you why. It's classified.

He who plots revenge must dig two graves.

Miles added it to his life's lessons list. Call it Rule 27B. Never make key tactical decisions while having electro-convulsive seizures.

We should have taken our chances back then, when we were young and beautiful and didn't even know it.

It's not that I'm not upset; it's just that I'm too tired to run up and down the corridor screaming.

It wasn't a case of storming heaven. It was a case of letting heaven storm you.

What you are is a question only you can answer.

He didn't think he was edging into dementia. He suspected he was edging into sanity, the long way around. The hard way.

Yet loyalty must run two ways, or else become betrayal in the egg.

Stand before his grave and use your gift of breath to complain of your limited time. If you dare.

I am not a fate worse than death, dammit!

On the sixth day God saw He couldn't do it all, so He created ENGINEERS

Farmer barn dances, although the

All happy endings are ultimately an illusion created by stopping short.

Are we not all called on to yield our children back to the world, in the end?

Like swatting flies with a laser cannon. The aim's a bit tricky, but it sure takes care of the flies.

You must learn to give, from sufficiency, not only take, from neediness.

Cordelia faced one more climb onto that torture-device for humans and horses called a saddle.

Some men just aren't cut for paternity. Better they should realize it before and not after they become responsible for a son.

If there is one thing that I have come to hate more than the gods, it is time.

Experience suggests it doesn't matter so much how you got here, as what you do after you arrive.

The gods give no gifts without hooks embedded.

Escapist literature gets a bad rap. But I think escape is important for a lot of people in a lot of places.

Anything worth achieving is worth overachieving.

Wikipedia is so dangerous.

So what's the test?"
"Ah, that's the trick of it. It's not a test. It's real life.

If you think safety is expensive, try pricing an accident, as the sign says.

Roic said nothing, firmly.

Yes," Vorkosigan agreed, "I could take over the universe with this army if I could ever get all their weapons pointed in the same direction.

Perfect preservation isn't life, it's death.

Let's go over a little astrography. Geography is the mother of strategy, they say.

My Lord, we wish to resign. Her smile, confusingly, crept wider, as if she just said something delightful.

Events may be horrible or inescapable. Men have always a choice - if not whether, then how, they may endure.

Send a patroller to check," said Miles a little tightly. Remembering he was supposed to be a diplomat, he added, "If you please." Teris

Pen wanted to ask if becoming a sorcerer made a man more, or less, attractive as a husband, but he had an uneasy feeling that he could guess.

Koudelka puzzled over this attempted readjustment of his point of view, then let it bounce harmlessly off his impermeable habits of thought.

Well, it is a particular sin to permit grief for what is gone to poison the praise for what blessings remain to us.

I have to find a boat. Somehow.

You have to be careful who you let define your good.

All the geniuses I ever met were so just part of the time. To qualify, you only have to be great once, you know. Once when it matters.

I began my writing career in a very isolated place and time.

For a while, I thought I was going mad. At last, I became reconciled to my despair.
The medications helped, too, I thought, sir.

The good face pain. But the great? They embrace it.

Lady Peace is the first hostage taken when economic discomfort rises.

The sort of fellow whose funeral's orations are all on the theme of Well, that's a relief.

I wonder if we should add a box to tick off
Reason for travel: creepy planetary conquest ... no, I suppose not.

Were you BORN inhuman or did you grow so by degrees?! MS, MD, PHD?

The fourth approved approach for the problem of frontally attacking a guarded wormhole was to shoot the officer who suggested it.

Endure pain, find joy, and make your own meaning, because the universe certainly isn't going to supply it.

If power was an illusion, wasn't weakness necessarily one also?

If you can't be seven feet tall, be seven feet smart.

We just try to go from day to day. Surprising where you can end up, that way.

How had he rehearsed this vitally-important, utterly-critical meeting, again? Mother, Father, let me introduce
she's getting away!

Truth is always War's first victim, the old saying went.

So the unknown breeds dragons in map margins, she reflected...

Growing up, I have discovered over time, is rather like housework: never finished.

Egalitarians adjust to aristocracies just fine, as long as they get to be the aristocrats.

A true Vor, Miles told himself severely, does not bury his face in his liegewoman's breasts and cry
even if he is at a convenient height for it.

We have what we can hold, dear boy, and never let them see you flinch or falter.

Change is possible.'

'Change is inevitable.

I am an atheist, myself. A simple faith, but a great comfort to me, in these last days.

When you give each other everything, it becomes an even trade. Each wins all.

Never interrupt your enemy while he is making a mistake

And whose fault was it that the boy swallowed down lies, when no one would feed him the truth?

The world is made by the people who show up for the job.

I have a catch-phrase to describe my plot-generation technique
'What's the worst possible thing I can do to these people?'

I don't want power. I just object to idiots having power over me.

Do it for yourself. The universe will be around to collect its cut later.

One step at a time, I can walk around the world. Watch me.

For me, writing is more a process of discovering the book than planning it.

Women do desperately need models for power other than the maternal.

He was beginning to wonder if he was trying to rescue the dragon.

The Imperial Service could win a war without coffee, but would prefer not to have to.

What do you most want for your birthday picnic, Admiral?" Taken by surprise, he answered honestly: "No casualties.

I do think, half of what we call madness is just some poor slob dealing with pain by a strategy that annoys the people around him.

Principles come and go, but ... human souls are immortal, and you should therefore throw in your lot with the greater part.

Ignorance is not stupidity, but it might as well be. And I do not like feeling stupid.

My dinner party,' Miles grated. 'It's just breaking up.' And sinking. All souls feared lost.

Forward momentum only worked as a strategy if one had correctly identified which way was forward.

I'd storm heaven for you, if I knew where it was.

The dead cannot cry out for justice; it is a duty of the living to do so for them.

Too late, he recalled Miles's dictum that the reward for a job well done was usually a harder job.

How could you be a Great Man if history brought you no Great Events, or brought you to them at the wrong time, too young, too old?

Utterly bleak and black is not the sum of realism. All the other colors are real, too.

Poets speak of hope in ladies smiles, but give me a smirk any day, I say.

Well, who wants to die in bed?" "You did, you always said. Of extreme old age, in bed, with somebody's wife." "Mine, by preference," Cazaril

Good soldiers never pass up a chance to eat or sleep. They never know how much they'll be called on to do before the next chance.

At some stage of development an officer had to stop following orders and start generating them.

I had to discover and teach myself all kinds of tricks to get people to respond to the inside of me, and not the outside.