Top 300 Lois McMaster Bujold Quotes (2025 Update)
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301. “Miles is... Miles; close to a force of nature, climbing up out of his own pages and escaping subordination to any opinion of mine.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

302. “If she finished her work – hah, now there was a fantasy, this work would never be finished, only abandoned, or, all right, passed on – she might squeeze out another day off by next weekend.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

303. “Men have always a choice – if not whether, then how, they may endure.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

304. “She turned for her kitchen, mentally revising her planned family dinner to include a Vor lord from the Imperial capital. White wine? Her limited experience of the breed suggested that if you could get them sufficiently sloshed, it wouldn’t matter what you fed them.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

305. “As had she, she supposed, but given that she was Aral’s wife, very few men who weren’t obviously insane had ever bothered her with unwanted advances. Although her own social obliviousness had doubtless also helped smooth things over.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

306. “Once you had delegated the best people to do a job for you, you had to trust both them and your judgment. What.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

307. “It was a curious insight into Vorkosigan that he should so automatically accept her bare word as binding; he evidently thought along the same lines himself. The.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

308. “Commodore Koudelka had just taken a mouthful of wine to chase his last bite of salmon. The atomized spray arced nearly to Delia, seated across from her father. A lungful of wine in a man that age was an alarming event in any case; Olivia patted his back in hesitant worry, as he buried his reddening face in his napkin and gasped. Drou half-pushed her chair back, as she hesitated between going up around the table to assist her husband or, possibly, down the table to strangle Mark.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

309. “Lord Miles Naismith Vorkosigan. Occupation: security risk. Hobbies: falling off walls, disappointing sick old men to death, making girls cry.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

310. “Good God, Enrique was writing poetry to her? Yes, and why hadn’t he thought of poetry? Besides the obvious reason of his absence of talent in that direction. He wondered if she’d like to read a really clever combat-drop mission plan, instead. Sonnets, damn. All he’d ever come up with in that line were limericks. He.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

311. “She opened her mouth once to speak, closed it, then finally ripped out, “Why aren’t you on your way home? I gave you an order, Lieutenant!” Stuben, anticipating a warmer reception, was momentarily nonplussed. “We took a vote,” he said simply, as though it explained everything. Cordelia.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

312. “The one thing you can’t trade for your heart’s desire is your heart.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

313. “I think it is not so much the growth of virtue, as simply the replacement of prior vices with an addiction to one’s god.” Umegat emptied his cup. “The gods love their great-souled men and women as an artist loves fine marble, but the issue isn’t virtue. It is will. Which is chisel and hammer.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

314. “There are a lot of senseless things in the world, but not all of them are sorrows. Everybody knows some light, even if they forget when they’re down in the dark. Something everyone else thinks is stupid, but you know is wonderful.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

315. “He fantasized about burning his fraying vestments when he finally reached home.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

316. “I can tell you truths. I cannot give you understanding. For how can one give what one does not possess? I have always told the truth.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

317. “The five theological purposes of prayer, I was taught, are service, supplication, gratitude, divination, and atonement.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

318. “You’re worse than evil. You’re inefficient.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

319. “Welcome to mine, Joen of Jokona,” said Ista. “I am the Mouth of Hell.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

320. “It’s never too late to save something,” he said sternly. “Might not be what you wanted, is all.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

321. “She took the story in like some strange, spiked gift, too fragile to drop, too painful to hold.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

322. “What did it say that Nikys had better luck getting a straight answer from a chaos demon than a man? Nothing new, more’s the pity.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

323. “Greed is an appetite that looks largely to some imagined or feared future.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

324. “When I was twenty, I knew everything about my future. Now, I know nothing.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

325. “Elena’s eye lit with a skewed enthusiasm. “Dear God, Miles. Metzov – Oser – Ungari – all in a row – you sure are hard on your commanding officers. What are you going to do when the time comes to let them all out?” Miles shook his head mutely. “I don’t know.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

326. “Ah.” “And what does ah mean?” he asked, slightly exasperated. “It’s sort of like biting my tongue, but less painful.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

327. “Miles looked up at his father. “Did I do the right thing, sir? Last night?” “Yes,” said the Count simply. “A right thing. Perhaps not the best of all possible right things. Three days from now you may think of a cleverer tactic, but you were the man on the ground at the time. I try not to second-guess my field commanders.” Miles’s heart rose in his aching chest for the first time since he’d left Kyril Island. He nodded, satisfied.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

328. “Her hands started to reach out, but then retreated behind her back and consoled each other there. “I am so sorry. But surely you see any girl must be quite afraid to marry a man who could set her on fire with a word!” He’d dreamed of setting her alight with kisses. “Any man could set a girl on fire with a torch, but he’d have to be deranged!”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

329. “My word was too easy to give, too hard to keep.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

330. “The demon settled like a dog cowering before a stern master, and no wonder; it had been a dog, or rather been in a dog, at one time, Pen was certain. The new-hatched elemental had found its early way through lesser animals before that, maybe, but mostly it was doggish.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

331. “How could you argue sense into someone who believed something not because it was true, but because he was an idiot?”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

332. “He laughed. “I was the youngest admiral in the history of our fleet – I might end up the oldest ensign, too. But no.” He sobered.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

333. “Why are you wearing slippers?” She stared down at her feet. “I’m – sorry, Pilot Officer Mayhew. That’s classified.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

334. “What, everyone knows of Royesse Iselle’s clever secretary, the man who keeps his own counsel – and hers – the Bastion of Gotorget – utterly indifferent to wealth – ” “No, I’m not,” Cazaril assured him earnestly. “I just dress badly. I quite like wealth.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

335. “Carry on. Remember, I want maximum inefficiency, incompetence, and error. On the Vervani channels, that is. You’ve worked with trainees, surely. Be creative.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

336. “I admit, he has far too much on his mind at the moment. Suppressed panic turns him into a prick every time; it’s what he does instead of running in circles screaming. A way of coping, I suppose.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

337. “He was uneasily unsure about the intentions of the white god that she, and now he, served. Though so far, Penric seemed to have been let get on with his life free of holy molestation.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

338. “He claims that the gods, and we, are both right here all the time, a shadow’s thickness apart. We’ve no distance to cross at all to get to each other.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

339. “Mercy, High Ones. Not justice, please, not justice. We would all be fools to pray for justice.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

340. “And right or wrong, what I also saw was that you made an enemy, and left him alive behind you. Great charity. Bad tactics.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

341. “Other than that, how was Kyril Island, Ensign Vorkosigan?” inquired the Count. “You didn’t vid home much, your mother noticed.” “I was busy. Lessee. The climate was ferocious, the terrain was lethal, a third of the population including my immediate superior was dead drunk most of the time. The average IQ equaled the mean temperature in degrees cee, there wasn’t a woman for five hundred kilometers in any direction, and the base commander was a homicidal psychotic. Other than that, it was lovely.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

342. “This wasn’t prayer anyway, it was just argument with the gods. Prayer, he suspected as he hoisted himself up and turned for the door, was putting one foot in front of the other. Moving all the same.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

343. “If you desire a man to tell you comfortable lies about your prowess, and so fetter any hope of true excellence, I’m sure you may find one anywhere. Not all prisons are made of iron bars. Some are made of feather beds.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold

344. “As the week wore on, Ivan contemplated the merits of inertia as a problem-solving technique with growing favor.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold