Lois McMaster Bujold Quotes

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

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

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.

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

I'm very interested in the impact of biotechnology on the way people live.

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

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

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.

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

Adversity does teach who your real friends are.

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

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

It's an ancient and honorable term for the final step in any engineering project. Turn it on, see if it smokes.

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.

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.

You try to give away what you want yourself.

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.

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

Anything worth achieving is worth overachieving.

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

Whether you function as welders or inspectors, the laws of physics are implacable lie-detectors. You may fool men. You will never fool the metal.

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

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

When you choose an action, you choose the consequences of that action.

The principle difference between heaven and hell is the company you keep there.

Change is possible.' 'Change is inevitable.

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

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

Power is better than revenge. Power is a live thing, by which you reach out to grasp the future. Revenge is a dead thing, reaching out from the past to grasp you.

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

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

Exile, for no other motive than ease, would be the last defeat, with no seed of future victory in it.

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

I am an atheist, myself. A simple faith, but a great comfort to me, in these last days.

If you want to catch something, running after it isn't always the best way.

An honor is not diminished for being shared.

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

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

A good friend of my son's is a son to me.

Suicidal glory is the luxury of the irresponsible.

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

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.

Surely only correct understanding could lead to correct action.

A hundred objective measurements didn't sum the worth of a garden; only the delight of its users did that.

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

What you are is a question only you can answer.

My home is not a place, it is people.

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.

Never argue with a pedant over nomenclature. It wastes your time and annoys the pedant.

Most people go through their whole lives without killing anybody. False argument.