Lois Mcmaster Bujold Quotes

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

If you can't be seven feet tall, be seven feet smart.

Some prices are just too high, no matter how much you may want the prize. The one thing you can't trade for your heart's desire is your heart.

When you choose an action, you choose the consequences of that action. When you desire a consequence you had damned well better take the action that would create it.

Don't wish to be normal. Wish to be yourself. To the hilt. Find out what you're best at, and develop it, and hopscotch your weaknesses. Wish to be great at whatever you are.

I've always thought tests are a gift. And great tests are a great gift. To fail the test is a misfortune. But to refuse the test is to refuse the gift, and something worse, more irrevocable, than misfortune.

Since no one is perfect, it follows that all great deeds have been accomplished out of imperfection. Yet they were accomplished, somehow, all the same.

Guard your honor. Let your reputation fall where it will. And outlive the bastards.

My home is not a place, it is people.

Events may be horrible or inescapable. Men have always a choice - if not whether, then how, they may endure.

Some people grow into their dreams, instead of out of them.

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

But pain... seems to me an insufficient reason not to embrace life. Being dead is quite painless. Pain, like time, is going to come on regardless. Question is, what glorious moments can you win from life in addition to the pain?

A weapon is a device for making your enemy change his mind.

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

I am who I choose to be. I have always been what I chose, though not always what I pleased.

I don't want power. I just object to idiots having power over me.

The gods' most savage curses come upon us as answers to our own prayers. Prayer is a dangerous business.

Aim high. You may still miss the target, but at least you won't shoot your foot off.

We should have taken our chances back then, when we were young and beautiful and didn't even know it.

When the time comes to leap in faith whether you have your eyes open or closed or scream all the way down or not makes no practical difference.

The world is made by the people who show up for the job.

The dead cannot cry out for justice; it is a duty of the living to do so for them.

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.

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.

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.

Growing up, I have discovered over time, is rather like housework: never finished.

The will to be stupid is a very powerful force, but there are always alternatives.

On the sixth day God saw He couldn't do it all, so He created ENGINEERS

One step at a time,” Vorkosigan returned grimly, “I can walk around the world. Watch me.

An honor is not diminished for being shared.

Never do yourself, what you can con professionals into doing for you.

I do think, half of what we call madness is just some poor slob dealing with pain by a strategy that annoys the people around him.

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

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 ease before his own hearth.

If you make it plain you like people, it's hard for them to resist liking you back.

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.

There is no more hollow feeling than to stand with your honor shattered at your feet while soaring public reputation wraps you in rewards. That's soul-destroying. The other way around is merely very, very irritating.

Too late, he recalled Miles's dictum that the reward for a job well done was usually a harder job.

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

Miles clutched Quinn's elbow. "Don't Panic." "I'm not panicking," Quinn observed, "I'm watching you panic. It's more entertaining .

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.

The rule for finding plots for character-centered novels, which is to ask: 'So what's the worst possible thing I can do to *this* guy?' And then do it.

If you can't do what you want, do what you can.

I've got forward momentum. There's no virtue in it. It's just a balancing act. I don't dare stop.

Endure pain, find joy, and make your own meaning, because the universe certainly isn't going to supply it.

Experience suggests it doesn't matter so much how you got here, as what you do after you arrive.

Not that I haven't leaped up into the blinding light of competence now and then. It's sustaining the altitude that defeats me.

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.

If the truth doesn't save us, what does that say about us?

Poets speak of hope in ladies smiles, but give me a smirk any day, I say.

[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.

I am not a fate worse than death, dammit!

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

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

If you're trying to take a roomful of people by surprise, it's a lot easier to hit your targets if you don't yell going through the door.

If power was an illusion, wasn't weakness necessarily one also?

Well, what is a blessing but a curse from another point of view?

Cecil flashed a grin. "Quite. Plus your rather irritating habit of treating your superior officers as your, ah..." Cecil paused, apparently groping again for just the right word. "Equals?" Miles hazarded. "Cattle," Cecil corrected judiciously.

But when he’s cut, I bleed.

It was hell to be so tired, and still care.

I'd storm heaven for you, if I knew where it was.

You try to give away what you want yourself.

Money, power, sex ... and elephants.

Lately I have come to believe that the principle difference between Heaven and Hell is the company you keep there....

Anything worth achieving is worth overachieving.

You don't pay back your parents. You can't. The debt you owe them gets collected by your children, who hand it down in turn. It's a sort of entailment. Or if you don't have children of the body, it's left as a debt to your common humanity. Or to your God, if you possess or are possessed by one. The family economy evades calculation in the gross planetary product. It's the only deal I know where, when you give more than you get, you aren't bankrupted - but rather, vastly enriched.

Now, there's this about cynicism, Sergeant. It's the universe's most supine moral position. Real comfortable. If nothing can be done, then you're not some kind of shit for not doing it, and you can lie there and stink to yourself in perfect peace.

When the souls rise up in glory, yours shall not be shunned nor sunderered, but shall be the prize of the gods' gardens. Even your darkness shall be treasured then, and all your pain made holy.

…the trouble with oaths of the form, death before dishonor, is that eventually, given enough time and abrasion, they separate the world into two sorts of people: the dead, and the forsworn.

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.

The good face pain. But the great? They embrace it.

My dinner party,' Miles grated. 'It's just breaking up.' And sinking. All souls feared lost.

Yes," Vorkosigan agreed, "I could take over the universe with this army if I could ever get all their weapons pointed in the same direction.

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

Oh, was that liquor of yours a stimulant?" asked Elena. "I wondered why he didn't fall asleep." "Couldn't you tell?" chuckled Mayhew. "Not really." Miles twisted his head to take in Elena's upside-down worried face, and smile in weak reassurance. Sparkly black and purple whirlpools clouded his vision. Mayhew's laughter faded. "My God," he said hollowly, "you mean he's like that all the time?

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

I don't confuse greatness with perfection. To be great anyhow is…the higher achievement.

I don’t duel, boy. I kill as a soldier kills, which is as a butcher kills, as quickly, efficiently, and with as least risk to myself as I can arrange.

Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself... Guard your honor. Let your reputation fall where it will. And outlive the bastards.

It’s not that I’m not upset; it’s just that I’m too tired to run up and down the corridor screaming.

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

Miles exhaled carefully, faint with rage and reminded grief. He does not know, he told himself. He cannot know... "Ivan, one of these days somebody is going to pull out a weapon and plug you, and you're going to die in bewilderment, crying, "What did I say? What did I say?" "What did I say?" asked Ivan indignantly.

It’s important that someone celebrate our existence," she objected amiably. "People are the only mirror we have to see ourselves in. The domain of all meaning. All virtue, all evil, are contained only in people. There is none in the universe at large. Solitary confinement is a punishment in every human culture.

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.

This is important! But you have to stay absolutely cool. I may be completely off-base, and panicking prematurely." "I don't think so. I think you're panicking post-maturely. In fact, if you were panicking any later it would be practically posthumously. I've been panicking for days.

Signs of the Bastard's holy presence tend to be unmistakable, to those who know Him. The screaming, the altercations, the people running in circles - all that was lacking was something bursting into flame, and I was not entirely sure for a moment you weren't going to provide that as well.

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.

Damn it," he mumbled apologetically, "things like this never happened to Vorthalia the Bold." She raised a thoughtful eyebrow. "How do you know? The histories of those times were all written by minstrels and poets. You try and think of a word that rhymes with 'bleeding ulcer

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.

He wanted to know what I saw in you. I told him..." he paused again, and then continued almost shyly, "that you poured out honor like a fountain, all around you." "That's weird. I don't feel full of honor, or anything else, except maybe confusion." "Naturally not. Fountains keep nothing for themselves.

One corner of his mouth crooked up, then the quirk vanished in a thoughtful pursing of his lips. "He's bisexual, you know." He took a delicate sip of his wine. "Was bisexual," she corrected absently, looking fondly across the room. "Now he's monogamous." Vordarian choked, sputtering.

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.

I'm not getting it all sorted, she worried. I'm not getting it right. You are brilliant, the Voice reassured her. It is imperfect. So are all things trapped in time. You are brilliant, nonetheless. How fortunate for Us that We thirst for glorious souls rather than faultless ones, or We should be parched indeed, and most lonely in Our perfect righteousness. Carry on imperfectly, shining Ista.

Welcome to Barrayar, son. Here you go: have a world of wealth and poverty, wrenching change and rooted history. Have a birth; have two. Have a name. Miles means "soldier," but don't let the power of suggestion overwhelm you. Have a twisted form in a society that loathes and fears the mutations that have been its deepest agony. Have a title, wealth, power, and all the hatred and envy they will draw. Have your body ripped apart and re-arranged. Inherit an array of friends and enemies you never made. Have a grandfather from hell. Endure pain, find joy, and make your own meaning, because the universe certainly isn't going to supply it. Always be a moving target. Live. Live. Live.

I know girls who pine for it. They like to play dress-up and pretend being Vor ladies of old, rescued from menace by romantic Vor youths. For some reason they never play 'dying in childbirth', or 'vomiting your guts out from the red dysentery', or 'weaving till you go blind and crippled from arthritis and dye poisoning', or 'infanticide'. Well, they do die romantically of disease sometimes, but somehow it's always an illness that makes you interestingly pale and everyone sorry and doesn't involve losing bowel control.

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.

This is the most important thing I will ever say to you. The human mind is the ultimate testing device. You can take all the notes you want on the technical data, anything you forget you can look up again, but this must be engraved on your hearts in letters of fire. There is nothing, nothing, nothing, more important to me in the men and women I train than their absolute personal integrity. Whether you function as welders or inspectors, the laws of physics are implacable lie detectors. You may fool men. You will never fool metal. That’s all.

Miles had sworn his officer's oath to the Emperor less than two weeks ago, puffed with pride at his achievement. In his secret mind he had imagined himself keeping that oath through blazing battle, enemy torture, what-have-you, even while sharing cynical cracks afterwards with Ivan about archaic dress swords and the sort of people who insisted on wearing them. But in the dark of subtler temptations, those that hurt without heroism for consolation, he foresaw, the Emperor would no longer be the symbol of Barrayar in his heart. Peace to you, small lady, he thought to Raina. You've won a twisted poor modern knight, to wear your favor on his sleeve. But it's a twisted poor world we were both born into, that rejects us without mercy and ejects us without consultation. At least I won't just tilt at windmills for you. I'll send in sappers to mine the twirling suckers, and blast them into the sky.... He knew who he served now. And why he could not quit. And why he must not fail.

Dear Madam Vorsoisson, I am sorry. This is the eleventh draft of this letter. They’ve all started with those three words, even the horrible version in rhyme, so I guess they stay. You once asked me never to lie to you. All right, so. I’ll tell you the truth now even if it isn’t the best or cleverest thing, and not abject enough either. I tried to be the thief of you, to ambush and take prisoner what I thought I could never earn or be given. You were not a ship to be hijacked, but I couldn’t think of any other plan but subterfuge and surprise. Though not as much of a surprise as what happened at dinner. The revolution started prematurely because the idiot conspirator blew up his secret ammo dump and lit the sky with his intentions. Sometimes these accidents end in new nations, but more often they end badly, in hangings and beheadings. And people running into the night. I can’t be sorry that I asked you to marry me, because that was the one true part in all the smoke and rubble, but I’m sick as hell that I asked you so badly. Even though I’d kept my counsel from you, I should have at least had the courtesy to keep it from others as well, till you’d had the year of grace and rest you’d asked for. But I became terrified that you’d choose another first. So I used the garden as a ploy to get near you. I deliberately and consciously shaped your heart’s desire into a trap. For this I am more than sorry, I am ashamed. You’d earned every chance to grow. I’d like to pretend I didn’t see it would be a conflict of interest for me to be the one to give you some of those chances, but that would be another lie. But it made me crazy to watch you constrained to tiny steps, when you could be outrunning time. There is only a brief moment of apogee to do that, in most lives. I love you. But I lust after and covet so much more than your body. I wanted to possess the power of your eyes, the way they see form and beauty that isn’t even there yet and draw it up out of nothing into the solid world. I wanted to own the honor of your heart, unbowed in the vilest horrors of Komarr. I wanted your courage and your will, your caution and your serenity. I wanted, I suppose, your soul, and that was too much to want. I wanted to give you a victory. But by their essential nature triumphs can’t be given. They must be taken, and the worse the odds and the fiercer the resistance, the greater the honor. Victories can’t be gifts. But gifts can be victories, can’t they. It’s what you said. The garden could have been your gift, a dowry of talent, skill, and vision. I know it’s too late now, but I just wanted to say, it would have been a victory most worthy of our House. Yours to command, Miles Vorkosigan