Lois McMaster Bujold Quotes

There is a sad disconnectedness that overcomes a library when its owner is gone.
Lois McMaster Bujold
The book is not an object on the table; it is an event in the reader's mind. It's a process, through which an idea in my mind triggers an idea, more-or-less corresponding, in yours. The words on the page are merely the means to that end, a think-by-numbers set, a bottled daydream. The book, therefore, is only finished when someone reads it. - Sidelines
Lois McMaster Bujold
His master plan to get them all out the door early met its first check of the day when he opened his closet door to discover that Zap the Cat, having penetrated the security of Vorkosigan House through Miles's quisling cook, had made a nest on the floor among his boots and fallen clothing to have kittens. Six of them.Zap ignored his threats about the dire consequences of attacking an Imperial Auditor, and purred and growled from the dimness in her usual schizophrenic fashion. Miles gathered his nerve and rescued his best boots and House uniform, at a cost of some high Vor blood, and sent them downstairs for a hasty cleaning by the overworked Armsman Pym. The Countess, delighted as ever to find her biological empire increasing, came in thoughtfully bearing a cat-gourmet tray prepared by Ma Kosti that Miles would have had no hesitation in eating for his own breakfast. In the general chaos of the morning, however, he had to go down to the kitchen and scrounge his meal. The Countess sat on the floor and cooed into his closet for a good half-hour, and not only escaped laceration, but managed to pick up, sex, and name the whole batch of little squirming furballs before tearing herself away to hurry and dress.
Lois McMaster Bujold
Hunting hawks did not belong in cages, no matter how much a man coveted their grace, no matter how golden the bars. They were far more beautiful soaring free. Heartbreakingly beautiful.
Lois McMaster Bujold
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.
Lois McMaster Bujold
He was shaken by an unwelcome insight. Lives did not add as integers. They added as infinities.
Lois McMaster Bujold
If there’s no game, isn't winning a pretty meaningless concept?
Lois McMaster Bujold
It wasn't a case of storming heaven. It was a case of letting heaven storm you.
Lois McMaster Bujold
But personally, I think [sainthood] is not so much the growth of virtue, as simply the replacement of prior vices with an addiction to one's god.
Lois McMaster Bujold
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.
Lois McMaster Bujold
Apologizing to me again, thought Miles miserably. For me. He keeps telling me I'm all right—and then apologizing. Inconsistent, Father.He shuffled back and forth across the room again, and his pain burst into speech. He flung his words against the deaf door, "I'll make you take back that apology! I am all right, damn it! I'll make you see it. I'll stuff you so full of pride in me there'll be no room left for your precious guilt! I swear by my word as Vorkosigan. I swear it, Father," his voice fell to a whisper, "Grandfather. Somehow, I don't know how . . .
Lois McMaster Bujold
When I was a wee little kid," remarked Roic, watching over their shoulders, "there was a time I thought that any skinny old man I saw was my grandfather. It was pretty confusing.
Lois McMaster Bujold
Lord X was a tyrant, not a revolutionary. He wanted to take over the system, not change it.
Lois McMaster Bujold
The strangeness of the Barrayaran government system with all its unwritten customs, pressed on Cordelia not so much as first glance but gradually. And yet it seemed to work for them somehow. They made it work, pretending a government into existence. Perhaps all governments were all consensus fictions at their hearts.
Lois McMaster Bujold
God save me from another such victory.
Lois McMaster Bujold
I wanted to give you a victory. But by their essential nature triumphs can’t be given.
Lois McMaster Bujold
Change is possible.''Change is inevitable.
Lois McMaster Bujold
Her smile grew bitter as desert brine. "The gods may forgive Ista all day long. But if Ista does not forgive Ista, the gods may go hang themselves.
Lois McMaster Bujold
That civet-jasmine blend you're wearing tonight absolutely clashes with the third-level formal style of your dress, you know.
Lois McMaster Bujold
The fourth approved approach for the problem of frontally attacking a guarded wormhole was to shoot the officer who suggested it.
Lois McMaster Bujold
I am not schizoid. A little manic-depressive, maybe.""'Know thyself.'" "We try, sir.
Lois McMaster Bujold
I miss it every minute, and I have no wish at all to go back.
Lois McMaster Bujold
There's something to that in both directions," said Ekaterin mildly. "Nothing is more guaranteed to make one start acting like a child than to be treated like one. It's so infuriating. It took me the longest time to figure out how to stop falling into that trap.""Yes, exactly," said Kareen eagerly. "You understand! So—how did you make them stop?""You can't make them—whoever your particular them is—do anything, really," said Ekaterin slowly. "Adulthood isn't an award they'll give you for being a good child. You can waste . . . years, trying to get someone to give that respect to you, as though it were a sort of promotion or raise in pay. If only you do enough, if only you are good enough. No. You have to just . . . take it. Give it to yourself, I suppose. Say, I'm sorry you feel like that, and walk away. But that's hard.
Lois McMaster Bujold
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.
Lois McMaster Bujold
everyone has their folding-point, Miles. Their mortal vulnerability. Some just keep it in a nonstandard location.
Lois McMaster Bujold
For your fourth consoling thought, I would point out that in this venue," a wave of his finger took in Vorbarr Sultana, and by extension Barrayar, "acquiring a reputation as a slick and dangerous man, who would kill without compunction to obtain and protect his own, is not all bad. In fact, you might even find it useful.""Useful! Have you found the name of the Butcher of Komarr a handy prop, then, sir?" Miles said indignantly.His father's eyes narrowed, partly in grim amusement, partly in appreciation. "I've found it a mixed . . . damnation.
Lois McMaster Bujold
The really unforgivable acts are committed by calm men in beautiful green silk rooms, who deal death wholesale, by the shipload, without lust, or anger, or desire, or any redeeming emotion to excuse them but cold fear of some pretended future. But the crimes they hope to prevent in that future are imaginary. The ones they commit in the present — they are real.
Lois McMaster Bujold
Your father calls you to his court. You need not pack. You go garbed in glorious raiment. He waits eagerly by his palace doors to welcome you, and has prepared a place at the high table, by his side, in the company of the great-souled, honored, and best-beloved.
Lois McMaster Bujold
But when he’s cut, I bleed.
Lois McMaster Bujold
Miles added it to his life's lessons list. Call it Rule 27B. Never make key tactical decisions while having electro-convulsive seizures.
Lois McMaster Bujold
He who plots revenge must dig two graves.
Lois McMaster Bujold
Anyway, if the Cetagandans really wanted to assassinate you, they'd hardly do it here. They'd slip something subtle under your skin that wouldn't go off for six months, and then would drop you mysteriously and untraceably in your tracks
Lois McMaster Bujold
Poets speak of hope in ladies smiles, but give me a smirk any day, I say.
Lois McMaster Bujold
Bleeding ulcers run in my family, we give them to each other.
Lois McMaster Bujold
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
Not that I haven't leaped up into the blinding light of competence now and then. It's sustaining the altitude that defeats me.
Lois McMaster Bujold
Growing up, I have discovered over time, is rather like housework: never finished.
Lois McMaster Bujold
We should have taken our chances back then, when we were young and beautiful and didn't even know it.
Lois McMaster Bujold
It was hell to be so tired, and still care.
Lois McMaster Bujold
You go on. You just go on. There's nothing more to it, and there's no trick to make it easier. You just go on.""What do you find on the other side? When you go on?"She shrugged. "Your life again. What else?
Lois McMaster Bujold
It’s just a thing. You deal with it." "As in, one damn thing after another?""Yes, very like.
Lois McMaster Bujold
We see the world not as it is, but as we are.~Dag Redwing Hickory Bluefield
Lois McMaster Bujold
People do get hypnotized by the hard choices and stop looking at the alternatives. The will to be stupid is a powerful force
Lois McMaster Bujold
The world demands I make good choices on no information, and then blames my maidenhood for my mistakes, as if my maidenhood were responsible for my ignorance. Ignorance is not stupidity, but it might as well be. And I do not like feeling stupid.
Lois McMaster Bujold
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
You want to be good. All right, I can understand that. But you have to be careful who you let define your good.
Lois McMaster Bujold
Lately I have come to believe that the principle difference between Heaven and Hell is the company you keep there....
Lois McMaster Bujold
Do it for yourself. The universe will be around to collect its cut later.
Lois McMaster Bujold
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.
Lois McMaster Bujold
It’s true that if your religion failed to deliver a miracle, that a human sacrifice would certainly follow.""Ah...quite. You are a man of acute insight.""That’s not insight. That’s a personal guarantee.
Lois McMaster Bujold
It was suicide, wasn't it?""In an involuntary sort of way," said Vorob'yev. "These Cetagandan political suicides can get awfully messy, when the principal won't cooperate.""Thirty-two stab wounds in the back, worst case of suicide they ever saw?" murmured Ivan, clearly fascinated by the gossip."Exactly, my lord.
Lois McMaster Bujold
You must learn to give, from sufficiency, not only take, from neediness.
Lois McMaster Bujold
You were kind.”Cazaril shrugged. “Why not? What could it cost me, after all?”Bergon shook his head. “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 his ease before his own hear
Lois McMaster Bujold
Royse Bergon: "I've seen your integrity in action. It...widened my world. I'd been raised by my father, who is a prudent, cautious man, always looking for men's hidden, selfish motivations. No one can cheat him. But I've seen him cheat himself. If you understand what I mean."Caz: "Yes."R.B.: "It was very foolish of you to attack that vile Roknari galley-man."Caz: "Yes."R.B.: "And yet, I think, given the same circumstances you would do it again."Caz: "Knowing what I know now...it would be harder. But I would hope... I would pray, Royse, that the gods would still lend me such foolishness in my need."R.B: "What is this astonishing foolishness, that shines brighter than all my father's gold? Can you teach me to be such a fool, too, Caz?"Caz: "Oh," "I'm sure of it.
Lois McMaster Bujold
Well, it is a particular sin to permit grief for what is gone to poison the praise for what blessings remain to us.
Lois McMaster Bujold
There will be grace and forgiveness enough, old dog, even for you. I pray you will spare me a drink from that cup, when it overflows for you.- Miles Vorkosigan
Lois McMaster Bujold
You? I know you! You trust beyond reason."She met his eyes steadily. "Yes. It's how I get results beyond hope. As you may recall.
Lois McMaster Bujold
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.
Lois McMaster Bujold
And the Bastard grant us... in our direst need, the smallest gifts: the nail of the horseshoe, the pin of the axle, the feather at the pivot point, the pebble at the mountain's peak, the kiss in despair, the one right word.
Lois McMaster Bujold
The gods' most savage curses come upon us as answers to our own prayers. Prayer is a dangerous business.
Lois McMaster Bujold