Lois Quotes

The worst part of holding the memories is not the pain. It's the loneliness of it. Memories need to be shared.

Take pride in your pain; you are stronger than those who have none

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

It is very risky. But each time a child opens a book, he pushes open the gate that separates him from Elsewhere.

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

I never understood why Clark Kent was so hell bent on keeping Lois Lane in the dark.

A good friend is a connection to life - a tie to the past, a road to the future, the key to sanity in a totally insane world.

We gained control of many things. But we had to let go of others.

If you were to be lost in the river, Jonas, your memories would not be lost with you. Memories are forever.

I feel sorry for anyone who is in a place where he feels strange and stupid.

It's the choosing that's important, isn't it?

Memory is the happiness of being alone.

Of course they needed to care. It was the meaning of everything.

The life where nothing was ever unexpected. Or inconvenient. Or unusual. The life without colour, pain or past.

For the first time, he heard something that he knew to be music. He heard people singing. Behind him, across vast distances of space and time, from the place he had left, he thought he heard music too. But perhaps, it was only an echo.

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.

It is much easier to be brave if you do not know everything.

They were satisfied with their lives which had none of the vibrance his own was taking on. And he was angry at himself, that he could not change that for them.

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.

Even trained for years as they all had been in precision of language, what words could you use which would give another the experience of sunshine?

I knew that there had been times in the past-terrible times-when people had destroyed others in haste,in fear, and had brought about their own destruction

If everything's the same, then there aren't any choices! I want to wake up in the morning and decide things!

He wept, and it felt as if the tears were cleansing him, as if his body needed to empty itself.

The man that I named the Giver passed along to the boy knowledge, history, memories, color, pain, laughter, love, and truth. Every time you place a book in the hands of a child, you do the same thing. It is very risky. But each time a child opens a book, he pushes open the gate that separates him from Elsewhere. It gives him choices. It gives him freedom. Those are magnificent, wonderfully unsafe things. [from her Newberry Award acceptance speech]

Teasing's part of the fun that comes before kissing

Gabe?" The newchild stirred slightly in his sleep. Jonas looked over at him. "There could be love", Jonas whispered.

Ellen had said that her mother was afraid of the ocean, that it was too cold and too big. The sky was, too, thought Annemarie. The whole world was: too cold, too big. And too cruel.

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.

There is something about that moment, when literature becomes accessible, and a door of the world opens.

It's just that... without the memories it's all meaningless.

There are many different types of kisses. There’s a passionate kiss of farewell—like the kind Rhett gave Scarlett when he went off to war. The kiss of I-can’t-really-be-with-you-but-I-want-to-be—like with Superman and Lois Lane. There’s the first kiss—one that is gentle and hesitant, warm and vulnerable. And then there’s the kiss of possession—which was how Ren kissed me now. It went beyond passion, beyond desire. His kiss was full of longing, need, and love, like all those other kisses. But, it was also filled with promises and pledges, some of which seemed sweet and tender while others seemed dangerous and exciting. He was taking me over. Staking a claim. He seized me as boldly as the tiger captured his prey. There was no escape. And I didn’t want to. I would have happily died in his clutches. I was his. And he made sure I knew it. My heart burst with a thousand beautiful blooms, all tiger lilies. And I knew with a certainty more powerful than anything I’d ever felt before that we belonged together.

I liked the feeling of love,' [Jonas] confessed. He glanced nervously at the speaker on the wall, reassuring himself that no one was listening. 'I wish we still had that,' he whispered. 'Of course,' he added quickly, 'I do understand that it wouldn't work very well. And that it's much better to be organized the way we are now. I can see that it was a dangerous way to live.' ...'Still,' he said slowly, almost to himself, 'I did like the light they made. And the warmth.

Today is declared an unscheduled holiday.

He knew that there was no quick comfort for emotions like those. They were deeper and they did not need to be told. They were felt.

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.

You may lie.

I demoted him from The Best Man Ever to just The Best Man I’d Ever Met. Superman would have charged out (hell, he’d have flown) to get Lois Lane cookies. I was pretty sure of it.

Behind him,across vast distances of space and time, from the place he had left, he thought he heard music too. But perhaps it was only an echo.

I don't know what you mean when you say 'the whole world' or 'generations before him.'I thought there was only us. I thought there was only now.

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

What if they were allowed to choose their own mate? And chose wrong?

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.

He hunched his shoulders and tried to make himself smaller in the seat. He wanted to disappear, to fade away, not to exist.

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

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

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?

She fell asleep, and it was a sleep as thin as the night clouds, dotted with dreams that came and went like the stars.

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

Mama was crying, and the rain made it seem as if the whole world was crying.

Fear dims when you learn things.

...now he saw the familiar wide river beside the path differently. He saw all of the light and color and history it contained and carried in its slow - moving water; and he knew that there was an Elsewhere from which it came, and an Elsewhere to which it was going

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.

He wept because he was afraid now that he could not save Gabriel. He no longer cared about himself

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.

And here in this room, I re-experience the memories again and again it is how wisdom comes and how we shape our future.

Be proud of your pain, for you are stronger than those with none.

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

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

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.

It was almost December, and Jonas was beginning to be frightened.

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

It's hard to give up the being together with someone.

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

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.

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.

And they are beginning to realize that the world they live in is a place where the right thing is often hard, sometimes dangerous, and frequently unpopular.

it is much easier to be brave if you do not know everything

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.

The whole world had changed. Only the fairy tales remained the same. "And they lived happily ever after,

The community of the Giver had achieved at such great price. A community without danger or pain. But also, a community without music, color or art. And books.

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

Memories are forever.

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.

- My instructors in science and technology have taught us about how the brain works. It's full of electrical impulses. It's like a computer. If you stimulate one part of the brain with an electrode, it... - They know nothing.

It be better, I think, to climb out in search of something, instead of hating, what you're leaving.

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

When people have the freedom to choose, they choose wrong, every single time.

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.

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's much more. There's all that goes beyond – all ... that is Elsewhere – and all that goes back, and back, and back. I received all of those, when I was selected. And here in this room, all alone, I re-experience them again and again. It is how wisdom comes. And how we shape our future.

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

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.

But there was nothing left to do but continue

Sit down every day and DO IT. Writing is a self-taught craft; the more you work at it, the more skilled you become. And when you're not writing, READ.

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.

Things could change, Gabe," Jonas went on. "Things could be different. I don't know how, but there must be some way for things to be different. There could be colors. And grandparents," he added, staring through the dimness toward the ceiling of his sleepingroom. "And everybody would have the memories." "You know the memories," he whispered, turning toward the crib. Garbriel's breathing was even and deep. Jonas liked having him there, though he felt guilty about the secret. Each night he gave memories to Gabriel: memories of boat rides and picnics in the sun; memories of soft rainfall against windowpanes; memories of dancing barefoot on a damp lawn. "Gabe?" The newchild stirred slightly in his sleep. Jonas looked over at him. "There could be love," Jonas whispered.

His mind reeled. Now, empowered to ask questions of utmost rudeness-and promised answers-he could, conceivably (though it was almost unimaginable), ask someone, some adult, his father perhaps: "Do you lie?" But he would have no way of knowing if the answer he received was true.

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.

Cung said, “I have researched Vietnamese People fleeing to the land of the Uc da Loi! On the 26th of April 1976, the first boat carrying Vietnamese refugees arrived in Darwin. (Uc da Loi means Big Red Rat. The Vietnamese People named Australians as such because of the red kangaroo painted on the sides of Australian military vehicles. They did not know what a kangaroo was and so, they thought it was a rat. Hence the name of Uc da Loi.) (A Gracious Enemy & After the War Volume Two)

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?

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.