Lois McMaster Bujold famous quotes

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

#Death #Justice #Cry

If you can't be seven feet tall, be seven feet smart.
-- Lois McMaster Bujold

#Smart #Feet #Seven

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.
-- Lois McMaster Bujold

#Inspirational #Life #Being Yourself

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
-- Lois McMaster Bujold

#Revenge #Bags #Phrases

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.
-- Lois McMaster Bujold

#Athlete #Artist #Destiny

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.
-- Lois McMaster Bujold

#Perfect #Imperfection #Deeds

You try to give away what you want yourself.
-- Lois McMaster Bujold

#Giving #Trying #Want

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.
-- Lois McMaster Bujold

#Mean #Names #Dimensions

Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself.
-- Lois McMaster Bujold

#Success #Divorce #Character

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

#Love #Winning #Giving

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

#Men #Choices #Events

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

#Feet #Missing #Target

What you are is a question only you can answer.
-- Lois McMaster Bujold

#Teaching #Learning #Reality

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.
-- Lois McMaster Bujold

#Desire #Action #Wells

My home is not a place, it is people.
-- Lois McMaster Bujold

#Life #Home #People

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

#Engineering #Steps #Finals

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

#Powerful #Stupid #Alternatives

One step at a time, I can walk around the world. Watch me.
-- Lois McMaster Bujold

#Time #Steps #Watches

An honor is not diminished for being shared.
-- Lois McMaster Bujold

#Inspirational #Army #Honor

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

#Running #Want #Way

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?
-- Lois McMaster Bujold

#Pain #Winning #Disability

I don't confuse greatness with perfection. To be great anyhow is…the higher achievement.
-- Lois McMaster Bujold

#Greatness #Perfection #Achievement

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.
-- Lois McMaster Bujold

#Genius #Matter #Mets

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.
-- Lois McMaster Bujold

#Lying #Integrity #Heart

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

#Reality #Matter

The principle difference between heaven and hell is the company you keep there.
-- Lois McMaster Bujold

#Differences #Heaven #Principles

A good friend of my son's is a son to me.
-- Lois McMaster Bujold

#Son #Good Friend #Lost Friendship

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

#Feelings #Serendipity #Target

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

#Honesty #Real #Skins

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

#Friendship #People #Resistance

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

#Garden #Delight #Measurement

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.
-- Lois McMaster Bujold

#Pain #Sorry #Love You

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

#Book #Writing #Planning

Colonel Otto, do you have a, perhaps, fuller and more detailed account than your preliminary one of why my Imperial Security building is now largely an underground installation? From a technical perspective.
-- Lois McMaster Bujold

#Perspective #Building #Accounts

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.
-- Lois McMaster Bujold

#Lonely #Voice #Perfect

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

#Saws

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

#Elbows #Panic #Miles

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

#War #Coffee #Winning

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

#Jobs #Rewards #Too Late

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

#Giving #Smirk #Speak

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

#Time #Littles #Sticks

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

#Momentum #Way #Strategy

Anything worth achieving is worth overachieving.
-- Lois McMaster Bujold

#Achieve #Overachieving

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

#Needs #Models

I am not a fate worse than death, dammit!
-- Lois McMaster Bujold

#Fate

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.
-- Lois McMaster Bujold

#Care #Patient #Given

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.
-- Lois McMaster Bujold

#Gold #Doe #Next

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.
-- Lois McMaster Bujold

#Lying #Men #Iron

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.
-- Lois McMaster Bujold

#Saint #Scream #Jokes

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.
-- Lois McMaster Bujold

#Firsts #Retreat #Surprise

You have to be careful who you let define your good.
-- Lois McMaster Bujold

#Be Careful #Careful

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

#Hands #Choices #Age

If there's no game, isn't winning a pretty meaningless concept?
-- Lois McMaster Bujold

#Winning #Games #Meaningless

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

#Prayer #Hate #Men

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.
-- Lois McMaster Bujold

#Real #Destiny #Blood

I don't want power. I just object to idiots having power over me.
-- Lois McMaster Bujold

#Want #Idiot

There is a sad disconnectedness that overcomes a library when its owner is gone.
-- Lois McMaster Bujold

#Library #Overcoming #Gone

I've always tried to write the kind of book I most loved to read: character-centered adventure.
-- Lois McMaster Bujold

#Book #Writing #Adventure

I am increasingly convinced that technological culture is the entire root of women's liberation.
-- Lois McMaster Bujold

#Roots #Culture #Liberation

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.
-- Lois McMaster Bujold

#Writing

I think 99 percent of women's lib comes from technology making different kinds of lives possible, and then the social adjustment follows the technology - it doesn't precede it.
-- Lois McMaster Bujold

#Technology #Thinking #Different

I'm very interested in the impact of biotechnology on the way people live.
-- Lois McMaster Bujold

#Impact #People #Way

Seems like half my anxiety dreams are about airports.
-- Lois McMaster Bujold

#Dream #Airports #Anxiety

Wikipedia is so dangerous.
-- Lois McMaster Bujold

#Wikipedia #Dangerous

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

#Hero

There are always survivors at a massacre. Among the victors, if nowhere else.
-- Lois McMaster Bujold

#Victory #Survivor #Massacres

Exile, for no other motive than ease, would be the last defeat, with no seed of future victory in it.
-- Lois McMaster Bujold

#Victory #Would Be #Ease

I've described my usual writing process as scrambling from peak to peak on inspiration through foggy valleys of despised logic. Inspiration is better when you can get it.
-- Lois McMaster Bujold

#Inspiration #Writing #Usual

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

#Inspiration #Choices

No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy. Not when the enemy is me.
-- Lois McMaster Bujold

#Enemy #Battle #Firsts

It is always easier to get forgiveness than permission.
-- Lois McMaster Bujold

#Easier #Permission

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

#Real #Color #Black

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.
-- Lois McMaster Bujold

#Feet #Age #Way

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

#Climbing #Escaping #Pages

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.
-- Lois McMaster Bujold

#Motivational #Punishment #Mirrors

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

#Momentum #Virtue #Dare

I'd storm heaven for you, if I knew where it was.
-- Lois McMaster Bujold

#Heaven #Storm

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

#Change #Mind #Enemy

Guard your honor. Let your reputation fall where it will. And outlive the bastards.
-- Lois McMaster Bujold

#Fall #Honor #Reputation

Some people grow into their dreams, instead of out of them.
-- Lois McMaster Bujold

#Dream #People #Grows

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

#Prayer #Savages #Answers

Well, what is a blessing but a curse from another point of view?
-- Lois McMaster Bujold

#Blessing #Views #Point Of View

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
-- Lois McMaster Bujold

#Girl #Suicidal #Mean

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.
-- Lois McMaster Bujold

#Wine #Bisexual #Thoughtful

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.
-- Lois McMaster Bujold

#Character #Guy #Plot

The world is made by the people who show up for the job.
-- Lois McMaster Bujold

#Jobs #People #World

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

#Mad #Despair #Lasts

The good face pain. But the great? They embrace it.
-- Lois McMaster Bujold

#Pain #Faces #Embrace

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.
-- Lois McMaster Bujold

#People #Worry #Moments

But have you ever overheard two women discussing men? Men are crude liars, comparing their drabs, but women - I'd rather have [an] anatomist dissect me alive than to listen to the things the ladies say about us when they think they are alone.
-- Lois McMaster Bujold

#Liars #Thinking #Men

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.
-- Lois McMaster Bujold

#Important #Quests #Findings

Cecil flashed a grin. "Quite. Plus your rather irritating habit of treating your superior officers as your, ah..." Cecil paused, apparently groping again for just the right word. "Equals?" Miles hazarded. "Cattle," Cecil corrected judiciously.
-- Lois McMaster Bujold

#Habit #Miles #Plus

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.
-- Lois McMaster Bujold

#Prayer #Moving #Doors

His outflung hands traced over the threads of his rug, passed loop by loop through some patient woman's hands. Or maybe she hadn't been patient. Maybe she'd been tired, or irritated, or distracted, or hungry, or angry. Maybe she had been dying. But her hands had kept moving, all the same.
-- Lois McMaster Bujold

#Moving #Tired #Hands

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?
-- Lois McMaster Bujold

#Thinking #People #Alive

History does not so much repeat as echo, I suppose.
-- Lois McMaster Bujold

#Echoes #Doe

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.
-- Lois McMaster Bujold

#Peace #War #Slides

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.
-- Lois McMaster Bujold

#Sorry #Eye #Feelings