Lois mcmaster bujold quotes

Any communitys arm of force - military, police, security - needs people in it who can do necessary evil, and yet not be made evil by it. To do only the necessary and no more. To constantly question the assumptions, to stop the slide into atrocity.

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

Think of the glory. Think of your reputation. Think how great it'll look on your next resume." On my cenotaph, you mean. Nobody will be able to collect enough of my scattered atoms to bury. You going to cover my funeral expenses, son?" Splendidly. Banners, dancing girls, and enough beer to float your coffin to Valhalla." - Miles coaxing Ky Tung to agree to an almost suicidal mission

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

When you choose an action, you choose the consequences of that action.

There are always survivors at a massacre. Among the victors, if nowhere else.

It was never what I wanted to buy that held my heart's hope. It was what I wanted to be.

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

The rule for finding plots for character-centered novels, which is to ask: 'So what's the worst possible thing I can do to *this* guy?' And then do it.

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."

It’s important that someone celebrate our existence," she objected amiably. "People are the only mirror we have to see ourselves in. The domain of all meaning. All virtue, all evil, are contained only in people. There is none in the universe at large. Solitary confinement is a punishment in every human culture.

I've got forward momentum. There's no virtue in it. It's just a balancing act. I don't dare stop.

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.

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

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

You should have fallen in love with a happy man, if you wanted happiness. But no, you had to fall for the breathtaking beauty of pain.

Well, what is a blessing but a curse from another point of view?

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

The most important thing about quests, he decided, was not in finding what you went looking for, but in finding what you never could have imagined before you ventured forth.

Adversity does teach who your real friends are.

But pain seems to me an insufficient reason not to embrace life. Being dead is quite painless. Pain, like time, is going to come on regardless. Question is, what glorious moments can you win from life in addition to the pain?

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.

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.

This is the most important thing I will ever say to you. The human mind is the ultimate testing device. You can take all the notes you want on the technical data, anything you forget you can look up again, but this must be engraved on your hearts in letters of fire. There is nothing, nothing, nothing, more important to me in the men and women I train than their absolute personal integrity. Whether you function as welders or inspectors, the laws of physics are implacable lie detectors. You may fool men. You will never fool metal. That’s all.

An honor is not diminished for being shared.

Only the saints would joke so about the gods, because it was either joke or scream, and they alone knew it was all the same to the gods.

All great human deeds both consume and transform their doers. Consider an athlete, a scientist, an artist, or an entrepreneur. In service of their goals, they lay down time, energy and many other choices and pleasures; in return, they become most truly themselves. A false destiny may be spotted by the fact that it consumes without transforming, without giving back the enlarged self.

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.

Like integrity, love of life was not a subject to be studied, it was a contagion to be caught. And you had to catch it from someone who had it.

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

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

The real unforgivable acts are committed by calm men in beautiful green silk rooms, who deal death wholesale, by the shipload, without lust, without anger, or desire, or any redeeming emotion to excuse them but cold fear of some pretended future. But the crimes they hope to prevent in that future are imaginary. The ones they commit in the present - they are real.

My home is not a place, it is people.

Anything worth achieving is worth overachieving.

Never argue with a pedant over nomenclature. It wastes your time and annoys the pedant.

Some prices are just too high, no matter how much you may want the prize. The one thing you can't trade for your heart's desire is your heart.

A good friend of my son's is a son to me.

When the souls rise up in glory, yours shall not be shunned nor sunderered, but shall be the prize of the gods' gardens. Even your darkness shall be treasured then, and all your pain made holy.

There is no more hollow feeling than to stand with your honor shattered at your feet while soaring public reputation wraps you in rewards. That's soul-destroying. The other way around is merely very, very irritating.

He's not too short. He's just... concentrated.

Power is better than revenge. Power is a live thing, by which you reach out to grasp the future. Revenge is a dead thing, reaching out from the past to grasp you.

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.

If you desire a man to tell you comfortable lies about your prowess, and so fetter any hope of true excellence, I'm sure you may find one anywhere. Not all prisons are made of iron bars. Some are made of feather beds.

One of the best things about writing is how it redeems, not to mention recycles, all of one's prior experiences, including or perhaps especially the failures.

And this was your friend?" Cordelia raised her eyebrows. "Seems to me the only difference between your friends and your enemies is how long the stand around chatting before they shoot you.

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

The principle difference between heaven and hell is the company you keep there.

When the time comes to leap in faith whether you have your eyes open or closed or scream all the way down or not makes no practical difference.

I'm very interested in the impact of biotechnology on the way people live.

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.

You can say a lot in a little time, if you stick to words of one syllable.

You try to give away what you want yourself.

Adulthood isn't an award they'll give you for being a good child. You can waste years, trying to get someone to give that respect to you, as though it were a sort of promotion or raise in pay. If only you do enough, if only you are good enough. No. You have to just take it. Give it to yourself, I suppose. Say, I'm sorry you feel like that and walk away. But that's hard

This is important! But you have to stay absolutely cool. I may be completely off-base, and panicking prematurely." "I don't think so. I think you're panicking post-maturely. In fact, if you were panicking any later it would be practically posthumously. I've been panicking for days.

Guard your honor. Let your reputation fall where it will. And outlive the bastards.

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

If you can't do what you want, do what you can.

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.

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

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

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.

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

From fried witchetty grubs to gold-plated turnips, when you're a writer you never know what's going to appear on your plate next. It keeps a woman alert, it does.

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

Wikipedia is so dangerous. You go online to look up the definition of eclampsia, and three hours later you find yourself reading this earnest explanation of tentacle porn in [Japanese] anime.

If the truth doesn't save us, what does that say about us?

I don't confuse greatness with perfection. To be great anyhow is the higher achievement.

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

When you choose an action, you choose the consequences of that action. When you desire a consequence you had damned well better take the action that would create it.

If you're trying to take a roomful of people by surprise, it's a lot easier to hit your targets if you don't yell going through the door.

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

I'm the one that's got to die when it's time for me to die, so let me live my life the way I want to.” - Jimi Hendrix, “The dead cannot cry out for justice. It is a duty of the living to do so for them.

Miles clutched Quinn's elbow. "Don't Panic." "I'm not panicking," Quinn observed, "I'm watching you panic. It's more entertaining .

The will to be stupid is a very powerful force, but there are always alternatives.

A hundred objective measurements didn't sum the worth of a garden; only the delight of its users did that.

It's an ancient and honorable term for the final step in any engineering project. Turn it on, see if it smokes.

Some people grow into their dreams, instead of out of them.

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

Honor is what you know about yourself.

War is not its own end, except in some catastrophic slide into absolute damnation. It's peace that's wanted. Some better peace than the one you started with.

Change is possible.' 'Change is inevitable.

I've always thought tests are a gift. And great tests are a great gift. To fail the test is a misfortune. But to refuse the test is to refuse the gift, and something worse, more irrevocable, than misfortune.

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.

I'm not getting it all sorted, she worried. I'm not getting it right. You are brilliant, the Voice reassured her. It is imperfect. So are all things trapped in time. You are brilliant, nonetheless. How fortunate for Us that We thirst for glorious souls rather than faultless ones, or We should be parched indeed, and most lonely in Our perfect righteousness. Carry on imperfectly, shining Ista.

Never do yourself, what you can con professionals into doing for you.

Never underestimate the human capacity for wishful thinking and willful blindness,' said Miles. Such as a whole society of people who became so wrapped up in avoiding death, they forgot to be alive?

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

If you want to catch something, running after it isn't always the best way.

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

"It was suicide, wasn't it?" "In an involuntary sort of way," said Vorob'yev. "These Cetagandan political suicides can get awfully messy, when the principal won't cooperate." "Thirty-two stab wounds in the back, worst case of suicide they ever saw?" murmured Ivan, clearly fascinated by the gossip. "Exactly, my lord."

Surely only correct understanding could lead to correct action.

All true wealth is biological.

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

Have you ever heard the phrase, Living well is the best revenge?" "Where I come from, someone's head in a bag is generally considered the best revenge

Any man can be kind when he is comfortable. I'd always thought kindness a trivial virtue, therefore. But when we were hungry, thirsty, sick, frightened, with our deaths shouting at us, in the heart of horror, you were still as unfailingly courteous as a gentleman at ease before his own hearth.

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.

Suicidal glory is the luxury of the irresponsible.

Honesty is the only way with anyone, when you'll be so close as to be living inside each other's skins.

A tactical retreat is not a bad response to a surprise assault, you know. First you survive. Then you choose your own ground. Then you counterattack.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

History does not so much repeat as echo, I suppose.

I'm sorry. I can love you. I can grieve for you, or with you. I can share your pain. But I cannot judge you.

Miles exhaled carefully, faint with rage and reminded grief. He does not know, he told himself. He cannot know... "Ivan, one of these days somebody is going to pull out a weapon and plug you, and you're going to die in bewilderment, crying, "What did I say? What did I say?" "What did I say?" asked Ivan indignantly.

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

All the worry people expend over not existing after they die, yet nary a one ever seems to spare a moment to worry about not having existed before they were conceived. Or at all. After all, one sperm over and we would have been our sisters, and we'd never have been missed.

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

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.

Since no one is perfect, it follows that all great deeds have been accomplished out of imperfection. Yet they were accomplished, somehow, all the same.

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

One corner of his mouth crooked up, then the quirk vanished in a thoughtful pursing of his lips. "He's bisexual, you know." He took a delicate sip of his wine. "Was bisexual," she corrected absently, looking fondly across the room. "Now he's monogamous." Vordarian choked, sputtering.

If you ever have to make a choice between learning and inspiration, choose learning. It works most of the time.

If you make it plain you like people, it's hard for them to resist liking you back.

What you are is a question only you can answer.

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

I am who I choose to be. I have always been what I chose, though not always what I pleased.

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

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