Lois McMaster Bujold Quotes

Don't wish to be normal. Wish to be yourself. To the hilt. Find out what you're best at, and develop it, and hopscotch your weaknesses. Wish to be great at whatever you are.

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

You want to be good. All right, I can understand that. But you have to be careful who you let define your good.

The strangeness of the Barrayaran government system with all its unwritten customs, pressed on Cordelia not so much as first glance but gradually. And yet it seemed to work for them somehow. They made it work, pretending a government into existence. Perhaps all governments were all consensus fictions at their hearts.

I am not schizoid. A little manic-depressive, maybe.""'Know thyself.'" "We try, sir.

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.

Change is possible.''Change is inevitable.

You? I know you! You trust beyond reason."She met his eyes steadily. "Yes. It's how I get results beyond hope. As you may recall.

Lately I have come to believe that the principle difference between Heaven and Hell is the company you keep there....

When I was a wee little kid," remarked Roic, watching over their shoulders, "there was a time I thought that any skinny old man I saw was my grandfather. It was pretty confusing.

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.""What do you find on the other side? When you go on?"She shrugged. "Your life again. What else?

One foot in front of the other, wasn't that the grownup way of solving problems? Surely he ought to be a grownup at his age.

His master plan to get them all out the door early met its first check of the day when he opened his closet door to discover that Zap the Cat, having penetrated the security of Vorkosigan House through Miles's quisling cook, had made a nest on the floor among his boots and fallen clothing to have kittens. Six of them.Zap ignored his threats about the dire consequences of attacking an Imperial Auditor, and purred and growled from the dimness in her usual schizophrenic fashion. Miles gathered his nerve and rescued his best boots and House uniform, at a cost of some high Vor blood, and sent them downstairs for a hasty cleaning by the overworked Armsman Pym. The Countess, delighted as ever to find her biological empire increasing, came in thoughtfully bearing a cat-gourmet tray prepared by Ma Kosti that Miles would have had no hesitation in eating for his own breakfast. In the general chaos of the morning, however, he had to go down to the kitchen and scrounge his meal. The Countess sat on the floor and cooed into his closet for a good half-hour, and not only escaped laceration, but managed to pick up, sex, and name the whole batch of little squirming furballs before tearing herself away to hurry and dress.

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

everyone has their folding-point, Miles. Their mortal vulnerability. Some just keep it in a nonstandard location.

We see the world not as it is, but as we are.~Dag Redwing Hickory Bluefield

It’s a . . . transcendental act. Making life. . . . ‘By this act, I bring one death into the world.’ One birth, one death, and all the pain and acts of will between. . . . Our children change us . . . whether they live or not.

Your father calls you to his court. You need not pack. You go garbed in glorious raiment. He waits eagerly by his palace doors to welcome you, and has prepared a place at the high table, by his side, in the company of the great-souled, honored, and best-beloved.

Barrayar is bred in my bones. I cannot shake it, no matter how far I travel. This struggle, God knows, has no honor in it. But exile, for no other motive than ease—that would be to give up all hope of honor. The last defeat, with no seed of future victory in it.

In mysticism, knowledge cannot be separated from a certain way of life which becomes its living manifestation. To acquire mystical knowledge means to undergo a transformation; one could even say that the knowledge is the transformation. Scientific knowledge, on the other hand, can often stay abstract and theoretical. Thus most of today’s physicists do not seem to realize the philosophical, cultural and spiritual implications of their theories.

Hunting hawks did not belong in cages, no matter how much a man coveted their grace, no matter how golden the bars. They were far more beautiful soaring free. Heartbreakingly beautiful.

It was hell to be so tired, and still care.

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

Anyway, if the Cetagandans really wanted to assassinate you, they'd hardly do it here. They'd slip something subtle under your skin that wouldn't go off for six months, and then would drop you mysteriously and untraceably in your tracks

Women shouldn't be in combat," said Vorkosigan, grimly glum. "Neither should men, in my opinion.

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

If there’s no game, isn't winning a pretty meaningless concept?

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

I'm afraid even ImpSec has no explanation for women's tastes in men.

Don't let fear swallow all your happiness. Don't forget to take joy." Dag gulped. Both of their grounds were nearly closed. It was Arkady's voice alone that hinted how hard-bought this bit of wisdom might've been, yet the words had been nearly toneless.

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

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

For your fourth consoling thought, I would point out that in this venue," a wave of his finger took in Vorbarr Sultana, and by extension Barrayar, "acquiring a reputation as a slick and dangerous man, who would kill without compunction to obtain and protect his own, is not all bad. In fact, you might even find it useful.""Useful! Have you found the name of the Butcher of Komarr a handy prop, then, sir?" Miles said indignantly.His father's eyes narrowed, partly in grim amusement, partly in appreciation. "I've found it a mixed . . . damnation.

This wasn't prayer anyway, it was just argument with the gods.Prayer, he suspected as he hoisted himself up and turned for the door, was putting one foot in front of the other. Moving all the same.

I need words that mean more than they mean, words not just with height and width, but depth and weight and, and other dimensions that I cannot even name.

But when he’s cut, I bleed.

He who plots revenge must dig two graves.

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

It’s true that if your religion failed to deliver a miracle, that a human sacrifice would certainly follow.""Ah...quite. You are a man of acute insight.""That’s not insight. That’s a personal guarantee.

The world demands I make good choices on no information, and then blames my maidenhood for my mistakes, as if my maidenhood were responsible for my ignorance. Ignorance is not stupidity, but it might as well be. And I do not like feeling stupid.

You don't pay back your parents. You can't. The debt you owe them gets collected by your children, who hand it down in turn. It's a sort of entailment. Or if you don't have children of the body, it's left as a debt to your common humanity. Or to your God, if you possess or are possessed by one.The family economy evades calculation in the gross planetary product. It's the only deal I know where, when you give more than you get, you aren't bankrupted - but rather, vastly enriched.

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

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

Suicidal glory is the luxury of the irresponsible.

The book is not an object on the table; it is an event in the reader's mind. It's a process, through which an idea in my mind triggers an idea, more-or-less corresponding, in yours. The words on the page are merely the means to that end, a think-by-numbers set, a bottled daydream. The book, therefore, is only finished when someone reads it. - Sidelines

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.

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

Real destiny takes everything—the last drop of blood, and strip out your veins to be sure—and gives it back doubled. Quadrupled. A thousand-fold! But you can't give halves. You have to give it all. I know. I swear. I've come back from the dead to speak the truth to you. Real destiny gives you a mountain of life, and puts you on top of it.

Bleeding ulcers run in my family, we give them to each other.

Not that I haven't leaped up into the blinding light of competence now and then. It's sustaining the altitude that defeats me.

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

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

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

Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself.

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

Apologizing to me again, thought Miles miserably. For me. He keeps telling me I'm all right—and then apologizing. Inconsistent, Father.He shuffled back and forth across the room again, and his pain burst into speech. He flung his words against the deaf door, "I'll make you take back that apology! I am all right, damn it! I'll make you see it. I'll stuff you so full of pride in me there'll be no room left for your precious guilt! I swear by my word as Vorkosigan. I swear it, Father," his voice fell to a whisper, "Grandfather. Somehow, I don't know how . . .

Royse Bergon: "I've seen your integrity in action. It...widened my world. I'd been raised by my father, who is a prudent, cautious man, always looking for men's hidden, selfish motivations. No one can cheat him. But I've seen him cheat himself. If you understand what I mean."Caz: "Yes."R.B.: "It was very foolish of you to attack that vile Roknari galley-man."Caz: "Yes."R.B.: "And yet, I think, given the same circumstances you would do it again."Caz: "Knowing what I know now...it would be harder. But I would hope... I would pray, Royse, that the gods would still lend me such foolishness in my need."R.B: "What is this astonishing foolishness, that shines brighter than all my father's gold? Can you teach me to be such a fool, too, Caz?"Caz: "Oh," "I'm sure of it.

[Koudelka] looked back, "You?! I know you! You trust beyond reason!"[Cordelia] met his eyes steadily, "Yes, it's how I get results beyond hope, as you may recall.

But personally, I think [sainthood] is not so much the growth of virtue, as simply the replacement of prior vices with an addiction to one's god.

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