Lois McMaster Bujold
American author of science fiction and fantasy works, most noted for the works in her Vorkosigan Saga.
Why did so many antique myths agree that hell was a circular place?
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.
It was never what I wanted to buy that held my heart's hope. It was what I wanted to be.
I don't take information and experience into my mind in that organized a fashion, but when I want to bring it out, somehow it's there. You write what you know because — like there's another choice? The trick is to try and know as much as possible.
The man who assumes everything is a lie is at least as mistaken as the one who assumes everything is true.
There is a subtle difference between being a prisoner and being a slave. I don't mistake either for being free.
You try to give away what you want yourself.
A stunning first impression was not the same thing as love at first sight. But surely it was an invitation to consider the matter.
Aim high. You may still miss the target but at least you won’t shoot your foot off.
She didn't feel anything, no grief or remorse, though her heart was racing and her breath came in gasps. A shocky combat-high, that immortal rush that made men charge machine guns. So this was what the war-addicts came for.
I have an aversion to closed doors anyway. You never know what's on the other side.
Children might or might not be a blessing, but to create them and then fail them was surely damnation.
If you want to catch something, running after it isn't always the best way.
Check your assumptions. In fact, check your assumptions at the door.
When you give each other everything, it becomes an even trade. Each wins all.
You can say a lot in a little time, if you stick to words of one syllable.
The loonies who sought a glorious death in battle found it very early on. This rapidly cleared the chain of command of the accumulated fools. The survivors were those who learned to fight dirty, and live, and fight another day, and win, and win, and win, and for whom nothing, not comfort, or security, not family or friends or their immortal souls, was more important than winning. Dead men are losers by definition. Survival and victory. They weren't supermen, or immune to pain. They sweated in confusion and darkness. And ... they won.
You can't solve problems by running away from them, it was said, and like the good child she had once been, she had believed this. But it wasn't true. Some problems could only be solved by running away from them.
I am increasingly convinced that technological culture is the entire root of women's liberation.