Lois McMaster Bujold Quotes

226 Sourced Quotes

"Am I reading too much into all that innuendo, or did you in fact just connive to assassinate Gregor in one breath, offer to cuckold him in the next, accuse your father of homosexuality, suggest a patricidal plot against him, and league yourself with Cavilo — what are you going to do for an encore?"
"Depends on the straight lines."

Lois McMaster Bujold
Acting or reacting, we carry him in us. You can't walk away from him any more than I can. Whether you travel toward or away, he'll be the compass. He'll be the glass, full of subtle colors and astigmatisms, through which all new things will be viewed. I too have a father who haunts me, and I know.

Lois McMaster Bujold
How can I give you up? You're the mountains and the lake, the memories — you have them all. When you're with me, I'm at home, wherever I am.

Lois McMaster Bujold
People give themselves to you, in their talking, and in other ways, if you are quiet and patient and let them, and not in such a damned rush to give yourself to them you go bat-blind and deaf.

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

Lois McMaster Bujold
And you could just watch men begin to see what he told them they were seeing, whether it was there or not.

Lois McMaster Bujold
I would fight the world for you, but I'm damned if I can figure out how to save you from yourself.

Lois McMaster Bujold
He found oddly little regret in his heart for his own lost life. He'd seen more of the world than most men ever did, and he'd had his chances, though the gods knew he'd made little enough of them. Marshaling his thoughts, as he sheltered under his covers, he realized with some wonder that his greatest dismay was for the work he'd be forced to leave undone.

Lois McMaster Bujold
Don't worry about that depressing old dictum "Write what you know". If you need to know something, look it up. Learn how to find out what you need to know to make it right. Be passionate, be picky, have enough self-criticism to demand of yourself your best and not sort of let it slide by. And remember that the greatest defect any piece of fiction can have is not to be finished.

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

Lois McMaster Bujold
"You go on. You just go on. There's nothing more to it, and there's no trick to make it easier. You just go on."
"And what do you find on the other side? When you go on?"
"Your life again. What else?"
"Is that a promise?"
"It's an inevitability. No trick. No choice. You just go on."

Lois McMaster Bujold
I miss it every minute, and I have no wish at all to go back.

Lois McMaster Bujold
Right or wrong, what I also saw was that you made an enemy, and left him alive behind you. Great charity. Bad tactics.

Lois McMaster Bujold
You can't choose between evil and evil, in the dark, by logic. You can only cling to some safety line of principle.

Lois McMaster Bujold
A weapon is a device for making your enemy change his mind.

Lois McMaster Bujold
Children might or might not be a blessing, but to create them and then fail them was surely damnation.

Lois McMaster Bujold
Modern warfare wasn't supposed to have this much blood in it. The weapons were supposed to cook everyone neatly, like eggs in their shells.

Lois McMaster Bujold
'It didn't work, so let's do it some more'? In my line of work, they call that military stupidity. I don't know what they call it in civilian life.

Lois McMaster Bujold
The loonies who sought a glorious death in battle found it very early on. This rapidly cleared the chain of command of the accumulated fools. The survivors were those who learned to fight dirty, and live, and fight another day, and win, and win, and win, and for whom nothing, not comfort, or security, not family or friends or their immortal souls, was more important than winning. Dead men are losers by definition. Survival and victory. They weren't supermen, or immune to pain. They sweated in confusion and darkness. And … they won.

Lois McMaster Bujold
One learns better than to hand one's choices to fear. With age, with every wound and scar, one learns.

Lois McMaster Bujold
"Do you know what this is, Lord Vorkosigan?" Giaja asked.
Miles eyed the medallion of the Order of Merit on its colored ribbon, glittering on a bed of velvet. "Yes, sir. It is a lead weight, suitable for sinking small enemies. Are you going to sew me into a silk sack with it, before you throw me overboard?"

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

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

Lois McMaster Bujold
Miles started to track the vote, but by the time the roll came around to him, had taken to jotting repeated iterations of Lady Ekaterin Nile Vorkosigan intertwined with Lord Miles Naismith Vorkosigan in his fanciest handwriting down the margins of his flimsy.

Lois McMaster Bujold
A hundred objective measurements didn't sum the worth of a garden; only the delight of its users did that. Only the use made it mean something.

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

Lois McMaster Bujold
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.

Lois McMaster Bujold
You can't solve problems by running away from them, it was said, and like the good child she had once been, she had believed this. But it wasn't true. Some problems could only be solved by running away from them.

Lois McMaster Bujold
Cynicism did not seem nearly so impressively daring to her now as it had when she was twenty.

Lois McMaster Bujold
Welcome to Barrayar, son. Here you go: have a world of wealth and poverty, wrenching change and rooted history. Have a birth; have two. Have a name. Miles means "soldier," but don't let the power of suggestion overwhelm you. Have a twisted form in a society that loathes and fears the mutations that have been its deepest agony. Have a title, wealth, power, and all the hatred and envy they will draw. Have your body ripped apart and re-arranged. Inherit an array of friends and enemies you never made. Have a grandfather from hell. Endure pain, find joy, and make your own meaning, because the universe certainly isn't going to supply it. Always be a moving target. Live. Live. Live.

Lois McMaster Bujold