Lois McMaster Bujold Quotes - Page 7

A stunning first impression was not the same thing as love at first sight. But surely it was an invitation to consider the matter.

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

My dinner party,' Miles grated. 'It's just breaking up.' And sinking. All souls feared lost.

I am not a fate worse than death, dammit!

It is always easier to get forgiveness than permission.

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.

Seems like half my anxiety dreams are about airports.

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

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

For a while, I thought I was going mad. At last, I became reconciled to my despair. The medications helped, too, I thought, sir.

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

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.

I wanted to give you a victory. But by their essential nature triumphs can’t be given.

A price is something you get. A cost is something you lose.

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.

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

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.

[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.

Whether you function as welders or inspectors, the laws of physics are implacable lie-detectors. You may fool men. You will never fool the metal.

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

Oh, was that liquor of yours a stimulant?" asked Elena. "I wondered why he didn't fall asleep." "Couldn't you tell?" chuckled Mayhew. "Not really." Miles twisted his head to take in Elena's upside-down worried face, and smile in weak reassurance. Sparkly black and purple whirlpools clouded his vision. Mayhew's laughter faded. "My God," he said hollowly, "you mean he's like that all the time?

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.

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.

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.

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