Lois McMaster Bujold
American author of science fiction and fantasy works, most noted for the works in her Vorkosigan Saga.
"Is this guy for real?"
"He thinks he's faking it, but he's not."
'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.
The good face pain. But the great — they embrace it.
If you desire a man to tell you comfortable lies about your prowess, and so fetter any hope of true excellence, I'm sure you may find one anywhere. Not all prisons are made of iron bars. Some are made of feather beds.
Was this the trick of it? Secrets so dire as to be unspeakable, thoughts so frightening as to make clear young voices mute, kicked out into the open with blunt ironic humor. And suddenly the dire didn't loom so darkly any more, and fear shrank, and anyone could say anything. And the unbearable seemed a little easier to lift.
Were you born inhuman, or did you grow so by degrees — M.S., M.D., Ph.D...
He found oddly little regret in his heart for his own lost life. He'd seen more of the world than most men ever did, and he'd had his chances, though the gods knew he'd made little enough of them. Marshaling his thoughts, as he sheltered under his covers, he realized with some wonder that his greatest dismay was for the work he'd be forced to leave undone.
Heroes. They sprang up around him like weeds. A carrier, he was seemingly unable to catch the disease he spread.
No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy. Not when the enemy is me.
It is always easier to get forgiveness than permission.
Eloquence consists of persuading people of things they desperately want to believe. Demagoguery, I suppose, is eloquence sliding to some least moral energy level.
An honor is not diminished for being shared.
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.
Some fortunate, prolific writers seem to be able, efficiently, to keep several projects going at once; it appears I am not one of them.
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.
You are a most excellent lawyer, for a dead man.
In my experience, milady, we can never get back to exactly where we started, no matter how hard we try.
Organization seemed to be the key. To get huge masses of properly matched men and materials to the right place at the right time in the right order with the swiftness required to even grasp survival — to wrestle an infinitely complex and confusing reality into the abstract shape of victory — organization, it seemed, might even outrank courage as a soldierly virtue.
One learns better than to hand one's choices to fear. With age, with every wound and scar, one learns.
If we shouldn't do it, we shouldn't be able to do it.