Lois McMaster Bujold
American author of science fiction and fantasy works, most noted for the works in her Vorkosigan Saga.
Read, or you will be missing something extraordinary.
Like integrity, love of life was not a subject to be studied, it was a contagion to be caught. And you had to catch it from someone who had it.
The entire center of her life was a blackened waste, its long years not to be recovered nor replaced.
The gods...the gods may forgive much, to a truly penitent heart."
Her smile grew bitter as desert brine. "The gods may forgive Ista all day long. But if Ista does not forgive Ista, the gods may go hang themselves."
Behavior that is rewarded is repeated. And the reverse.
It's never too late while you're breathing.
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 in merely very, very irritating.
The last thing a monster wanted was a fellow to follow him around all day long with a mirror.
How could I have died and gone to hell without noticing the transition?
My home is not a place, it is people.
And you could just watch men begin to see what he told them they were seeing, whether it was there or not.
I’d have worn them as a courtesy to your friend, I’ll wear them now as a defiance to our enemies.
Marriage was a lottery, and you drew your lot in late adolescence or early adulthood at a point of maximum idiocy and confusion.
Reading is an active and elusive experience. Every reader, reading exactly the same text, will have a slightly different reading experience depending on what s/he projects into the words s/he sees, what strings of meaning and association those words call up in his/her (always) private mind. One can never therefore, talk about the quality of a book separately from the quality of the mind that is creating it by reading it, in the only place books live, in the secret mind.
One scarcely knows if he would be of more use to us as a hostage, or set loose to be a very bad enemy leader.
You have a reputation as a bold Barrayaran barbarian—say that six times really fast—too dangerous to let loose.
Not all books are created equal, and for the special ones, you begin to know it sometimes even before the work is finished, but always by the time you slam that last line home and shriek, "Done! Done!," and fall head-down across your keyboard like the runner from Marathon.
No, no, never send interim reports. Only final ones. Interim reports tend to elicit orders. Which you must either then obey, or spend valuable time and energy evading, which you could be using to solve the problem.
It's a bizarre but wonderful feeling, to arrive dead center of a target you didn't even know you were aiming for.
A good friend of my son's is a son to me.