Lois McMaster Bujold Quotes

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

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.

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

Suicidal glory is the luxury of the irresponsible.

It’s a . . . transcendental act. Making life. . . . ‘By this act, I bring one death into the world.’ One birth, one death, and all the pain and acts of will between. . . . Our children change us . . . whether they live or not.

[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.

Tej seemed such a sunny personality, much of the time-these flashes of dark were like a crack in the sky, shocking and wrong. Reminding him that the daylight was the illusion, the scattering of light by the atmosphere, and the endless night was the permanent default behind it all.

Lakewalker legends say the gods abandoned the world when the first malice came. And that they will return when the earth is entirely cleansed of its spawn. If you believe in gods."

"Do you?"

"I believe they are not here, yes. It's a faith of sorts.

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

But though you’d never starve your body to wasting and still expect to go on, you starve your heart, yet act as though you can still draw on it forever without the debt ever coming due. If you fall - when you fall, you’re going to fall like a starving man.

So what’s the test?"
"Ah, that’s the trick of it. It’s not a test. It’s real life.

Modern warfare wasn't supposed to have this much blood in it. The weapons were supposed to cook everyone neatly, like eggs in their shells. (Mark Vorkosigan's first experience with warfare, on seeing Miles Vorkosigan splattered before him)

Ethan thought he understood how a propaganda-stuffed young soldier must feel the first time in combat, stumbling by some sudden chance over his enemy's human face. He had gloried for a red moment in his power to break her. Now he stood foolishly with the pieces in his hands. Not at all heroic.

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

But when he’s cut, I bleed.

Bleeding ulcers run in my family, we give them to each other.

Change is possible.'

'Change is inevitable.

If only one didn't know that at the secret heart of all such organizations, corporations and governments alike, it still came down to a finite number of fallible people talking to each other . . . ​

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

Women do desperately need models for power other than the maternal.