Top 300 Lois McMaster Bujold Quotes (2024 Update)
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151. “People give themselves to you, in their talking, and in other ways, if you are quiet and patient and let them, and not in such a damned rush to give yourself to them you go bat-blind and deaf.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

152. “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

153. “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

154. “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

155. “Not all prisons are made of iron bars, some are made of feather beds.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

156. “Where I come from, someone’s head in a bag is generally considered the best revenge.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

157. “If you ever have to make a choice between learning and inspiration, choose learning. It works most of the time.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

158. “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

159. “So you’re saying that I could die at any moment!” “Yes. And this is different from your life yesterday in what way?” Umegat cocked his head in dry inquiry.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

160. “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

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

— Lois McMaster Bujold

162. “There is this, about being the sparring partner of the best swordsman in Caribastos. I always lost. But if ever I meet the third best swordsman in Caribastos, he’s going to be in very deep trouble.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

163. “Lady Peace is the first hostage taken when economic discomfort rises.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

164. “No, no, never send interim reports,” said Miles. “Only final ones. Interim reports tend to elicit orders. Which you must then either obey, or spend valuable time and energy evading, which you could be using to solve the problem.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

165. “Miles watched the evening shadows flowing up along the backbone of the Dendarii range, high and massive in the distance. How small those mountains looked from space! Little wrinkles on the skin of a globe he could cover with his hand, all their crushing mass made invisible. Which was illusory, distance or nearness? Distance, Miles decided. Distance was a damned lie. Had his father known this? Miles suspected so.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

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

— Lois McMaster Bujold

167. “If you don’t understand something, you should just try to learn more, that’s all.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

168. “Yet loyalty must run two ways, or else become betrayal in the egg.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

169. “I’d storm heaven for you, if I knew where it was.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

170. “What do you most want for your birthday picnic, Admiral?” Taken by surprise, he answered honestly: “No casualties.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

171. “Well, you go straight back to bed, then!” “Yes.” He wheeled. She swatted him on the butt. He bit his tongue. She said, “At least you’ve been eating better. Take care of yourself, huh?” He.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

172. “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

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

— Lois McMaster Bujold

174. “Don’t let fear swallow all your happiness. Don’t forget to take joy.” Dag gulped. Both of their grounds were nearly closed. It was Arkady’s voice alone that hinted how hard-bought this bit of wisdom might’ve been, yet the words had been nearly toneless.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

175. “Illyan once told me that half the secret of House Vorkosigan’s preeminence in Barrayaran history was the quality of the people it drew to its service.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

176. “Men write poems to the objects of our desire in order to lure them closer.” “How practical. In that case, you’d think men would write more poems to ladies’ private parts.” “The ladies would hit us. Lips are a safe compromise, being as it were a stand-in or stepping-stone to the greater mysteries.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

177. “I gather from the pattern of her flinches that the late unlamented Tien Vorsoisson was one of those subtle feral parasites who leave their mates scratching their heads and asking, Am I crazy? Am I crazy?”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

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

— Lois McMaster Bujold

179. “Are you sure this isn’t instant boots?” asked Cordelia sadly, for in color, taste, and smell they closely resembled pulverized shoe leather pressed into wafers.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

180. “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

181. “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

182. “Yes. A bloody serious one. Desertion in the heat of battle,” said Miles. “If he gets extradited home, the penalty’s quartering. Technically.” “That doesn’t sound so bad.” Hathaway shrugged. “He’s been quartered in my recycling center for two months. It could hardly be worse. What’s the problem?” “Quartering,” said Miles. “Uh – not domiciled. Cut in four pieces.” Hathaway stared, shocked. “But that would kill him!”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

183. “There is a sad disconnectedness that overcomes a library when its owner is gone.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

184. “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

185. “Roic said nothing, firmly.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

186. “Koudelka puzzled over this attempted readjustment of his point of view, then let it bounce harmlessly off his impermeable habits of thought.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

187. “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

188. “But I know you have courage, and I know you have will. The rest is just picking yourself up and ramming into the wall again and again until it falls down. You get a bloody forehead, so what? You can do it, I swear you can.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

189. “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

190. “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.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

191. “Between one breath and the next, the vision took him. It came not as a chain of reason, more words words words, but as a blinding image, all complete in its first moment, inherent, holistic, gestalt, inspired. Every hour of his life from now on would be but the linear exploration of its fullness.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

192. “Don’t promote your troubles beyond your rank.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

193. “All her old thoughts seemed as thin and ragged as a piece of knitting made and ripped out and made and ripped out again until all the threads were frayed, growing ever more worn, but never larger.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

194. “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

195. “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

196. “Achievement is devastating, or at least disorienting, and they don’t warn you in advance. It’s the sudden change of momentum and direction, I think.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

197. “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

198. “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

199. “Second sight is redundant to reason anyway.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

200. “I am increasingly convinced that technological culture is the entire root of women’s liberation.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold