Lois McMaster Bujold
American author of science fiction and fantasy works, most noted for the works in her Vorkosigan Saga.
The good face pain. But the great — they embrace it.
'It didn't work, so let's do it some more'? In my line of work, they call that military stupidity. I don't know what they call it in civilian life.
"Is this guy for real?"
"He thinks he's faking it, but he's not."
Aren't family squabbles jolly fun? Bleeding ulcers run in my family, we give them to each other.
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 you can see the colors of the feathers, you'll also understand how you can expand your borders to infinity.
I've described my usual writing process as scrambling from peak to peak on inspiration through foggy valleys of despised logic. Inspiration is better — when you can get it.
If power was an illusion, wasn't weakness necessarily one also?
East is west, up is down, and being falsely arrested for getting your C.O.'s throat cut is a simplification. I must be on Barrayar.
You can't choose between evil and evil, in the dark, by logic. You can only cling to some safety line of principle.
A price is something you get. A cost is something you lose.
"I'm *not* schitzophrenic. A little manic-depressive, maybe."
"Know thyself."
"We try, sir."
Peace to you, small lady. 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. But at least I won't just tilt at windmills for you. I'll send in sappers to mine the twirling suckers and blow them into the sky.
"Just what kind of noose are you offering to put round my neck, here? Is this treason?"
"Worse," Cazaril sighed. "Theology."
With all this manure around, there's got to be a pony someplace.
And what goes on in the head of a walking dead man? What personal failure could he possibly fear more than death itself?
I have no right to risk. No, that's not quite correct. I have no right to failure. And I don't trust myself anymore. I don't know what's happened to my edge. Lost it in a strange land.
I attack both from the logic-side, scribbling outline after outline, and the long-walk relaxed-visualization-side, and while neither alone is enough, the combination synergizes. Which is just a fancy way of saying, "I think about it a lot, day and night."
Adversity does teach who your real friends are.
Exile, for no other motive than ease, would be the last defeat, with no seed of future victory in it.