Lois McMaster Bujold Quotes - Page 5

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.

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.

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

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 don’t duel, boy. I kill as a soldier kills, which is as a butcher kills, as quickly, efficiently, and with as least risk to myself as I can arrange.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

Suicidal glory is the luxury of the irresponsible.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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