Top 300 Lois McMaster Bujold Quotes (2026 Update)
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201. “Second sight is redundant to reason anyway.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

202. “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

203. “How did I get into this mess? Miles isn’t even here. -Ivan.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

204. “Were you BORN inhuman or did you grow so by degrees?! MS, MD, PHD?”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

205. “There was no limit to what one man might do, if he gave all, and held back nothing.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

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

— Lois McMaster Bujold

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

— Lois McMaster Bujold

208. “The officer hurried up to him, and half-saluted. “Admiral Naismith?” Iverson was no one he knew; at this level of the echelon the man must take him for a valued, but non-Barrayaran, ImpSec hireling. “The one and only. You can tell your men to relax. The installation is secured.” “You secured it yourself?” Iverson asked in faint disbelief. “More or less.” “We’ve been looking for this place for two years!” Miles.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

209. “I’ve always tried to write the kind of book I most loved to read: character-centered adventure.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

210. “How hard could husbanding be? Don’t drink, don’t gamble, don’t bring hunting dogs to the table. Don’t be terrified of tooth-drawers. Don’t be stupid about money. Don’t go for a soldier. No hitting girls. He wasn’t drawn to violate any of these prohibitions. Assuming older sisters weren’t classified as girls. Maybe make that, No hitting girls first.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

211. “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

212. “To use the machineries of justice to commit injustice is the deepest offense to the Father of Winter.” He.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

213. “When you can’t do something truly useful, you tend to vent the pent up energy in something useless but available, like snappy dressing.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

214. “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

215. “He did arrange to dine over at the Vorthys’s three times, and have Ekaterin and Nikki to meals at Vorkosigan House twice, before the wedding week hit and all his meals – even breakfasts, good God – were bespoken. Still, his timetable was not as onerous as Gregor’s and Laisa’s, which Lady Alys and ImpSec between them had laid out in one-minute increments.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

216. “He was shaken by an unwelcome insight. Lives did not add as integers. They added as infinities.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

217. “I’m not in a hurry,” the woman said. Patience for her vengeance dripped like vitriol from her voice; even Tich was quelled.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

218. “Not only was Ivan an idiot, but he generated a telepathic damping field that turned people nearby into idiots, too. He would point this out to Barrayaran Intelligence, who would make of his cousin the newest weapon in their arsenal – if.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

219. “How like a man, to change from mask to mask like a player, concealing all intention, yet leave his heart out on the table, carelessly, unregarded, for all to behold.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

220. “Nothing worth doing is fun all the time. But it’s still worth doing all the time.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

221. “In fifteen years, all those disturbing biological blobs would be out on Kareenburg’s streets, wearing strange fashions, listening to annoying music, and disagreeing politically with their beleaguered parents.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

222. “Successes are secret and thankless, failures are splashy and gain you only blame.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

223. “There are always survivors at a massacre. Among the victors, if nowhere else.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

224. “Could you people stop trying to come up with novel ways to kill me for just ONE HOUR? Or maybe the rest of the night? I would SO like that. Just the rest of the night. Just sit down. Just stop doing anything. Sit down and wait sensibly. Earth, water, air, fire – you’re running out of elements here!”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

225. “I am not a fate worse than death, dammit!”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

226. “Same jobs over and over, all have to be done again tomorrow or something dies? Despite the weather or the hurting, or, or whatever. Yeah, I guess there are some parallels.” While he was weighing this, his mouth kept moving without him. “Or maybe it’s just called being a grownup.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

227. “God made them, they must have a purpose, but then, God made lions, wolves, and head lice, too.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

228. “We are all of us, every one, our own works; we present our souls to our Patrons at the ends of our lives as an artisan presents the works of his hands.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

229. “I know my limits.” “No one knows their limits till they’ve gone beyond them.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

230. “He who plots revenge must dig two graves.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

231. “In my experience, milady, we can never get back to exactly where we started, no matter how hard we try.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

232. “Just once, Pen thought glumly, he’d like to get an answer to prayers, instead of being delivered as one.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

233. “I’m sorry, Lady Vorkosigan. We’ll simply have to begin at the beginning. Please bear with me. Do I understand correctly you’ve had some sort of female trouble?” No, most of my troubles have been with males.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

234. “I believe,” she said slowly at last, “that the tormented are very close to God. I’m sorry, Sergeant.” He.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

235. “We cannot protect anyone from being alive, Master Bosha. No matter how much we might wish to.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

236. “Guards, Miles now realized, had to stay in prison all day long too. Indeed, as a guard, one of his jobs was now to keep himself in.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

237. “He wondered how many would ever march home. Better it seemed to export cheese or cloth, but it was true that fortunes were made in the military trade. Though seldom by the soldiers, any more than by the cheeses.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

238. “Gardens were meant to be seen, smelled, walked through, grubbed in. A hundred objective measurements didn’t sum the worth of a garden; only the delight of its users did that.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

239. “The Son held up his hands. Luminescent, they seemed, as if dappled by autumn sun reflecting off a stream into shade. “My grace flows from these as a river, wolf-lord. Would you have me dole it out in the exact measure that men earn, as from an apothecary’s dropper? Would you stand in pure water to your waist, and administer it by the scant spoon to men dying of thirst on a parched shore?”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

240. “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.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

241. “The problem has just suddenly become a lot more interesting. Er, difficult. It’s just become a bit more difficult.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

242. “The future is happening right here, every day. You can swim or you can drown, but you can’t choose not to be in the flood. I suppose the real insight is that it’s always been that way.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

243. “Stop gibbering.” The Countess took his arm, and began more-or-less frog-marching him upstairs. Roic made a mental note of her technique, for future reference. She glanced over her shoulder and gave Roic a reassuring, if rather unexpected, wink. The.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

244. “Do it for yourself. The universe will be around to collect its cut later.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

245. “Save me from the virtuous.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

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

— Lois McMaster Bujold

247. “Ignorance is not stupidity, but it might as well be. And I do not like feeling stupid.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

248. “Is kidnapping kidnappers still kidnapping?” Miles mused. “Yes,” said Roic, unhelpfully. “Not that NewEgypt is likely to bring charges.” “Naw, they’d do something else.” “I am reminded. I could have Suze freeze and store them for us, I suppose. Technically.” Roic gave him the Look. “If push came to shove. As a Kibou-daini problem-solving technique, there seems to be precedent.” Roic said nothing, firmly.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

249. “If anyone was sane here, he swore it was by accident.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

250. “Are we not all called on to yield our children back to the world, in the end?”

— Lois McMaster Bujold