Lois McMaster Bujold Quotes

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

Your Reverence, I do not hate any man in this world enough to inflict the results of my prayers upon him.

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

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

All true wealth is biological.

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

Seems like half my anxiety dreams are about airports.

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

You couldn't be that good and not know it, somewhere in your secret heart, however much you'd been abused into affecting public humility.

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

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

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?

When you can’t do something truly useful, you tend to vent the pent up energy in something useless but available, like snappy dressing.

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

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

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.

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.

Change is possible.' 'Change is inevitable.

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.

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

[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.

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

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

There was no limit to what one man might do, if he gave all, and held back nothing.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

They stared at her curiously, and she caught snatches of conversation in two or three languages. It wasn't hard to guess their content, and she smiled a bit primly. Youth, it appeared, was full of illusions as to how much sexual energy two people might have to spare while hiking forty or so kilometers a day, concussed, stunned, diseased, on poor food and little sleep, alternating caring for a wounded man with avoiding becoming dinner for every carnivore within range - and with a coup to plan for the end.

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

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

Miles is... Miles; close to a force of nature, climbing up out of his own pages and escaping subordination to any opinion of mine.

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?

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.

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.

Mia Maz glanced aside in concern at his muffled snort. "Are you all right?" "Yes. Sorry," he whispered. "I'm just having an attack of limericks." Her eyes widened, and she bit her lip; only her deepening dimple betrayed her. "Shhh," she said, with feeling.

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.

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.

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

I am not a fate worse than death, dammit!

I spent my 20s working in patient care at a large university hospital, an experience that has informed all my work and has given me a lot of human observation to draw on.

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.