Lois McMaster Bujold
American author of science fiction and fantasy works, most noted for the works in her Vorkosigan Saga.
The dead cannot cry out for justice; it is a duty of the living to do so for them.
Just because we're adults doesn't automatically mean we can save you...
Surely only correct understanding could lead to correct action.
Hunting hawks do not belong in cages, no matter how much a man covets their grace, no matter how golden the bars. They are far more beautiful soaring free. Heartbreakingly beautiful.
All great human deeds both consume and transform their doers. Consider an athlete, or a scientist, or an artist, or an independent business creator. In the service of their goals they lay down time and energy and many other choices and pleasures; in return, they become most truly themselves. A false destiny may be spotted by the fact that it consumes without transforming, without giving back the enlarged self. Becoming a parent is one of these basic human transformational deeds. By this act, we change our fundamental relationship with the universe — if nothing else, we lose our place as the pinnacle and end-point of evolution, and become a mere link. The demands of motherhood especially consume the old self, and replace it with something new, often better and wiser, sometimes wearier or disillusioned, or tense and terrified, certainly more self-knowing, but never the same again.
I guess it just doesn't look very heroic to sneak up behind somebody and shoot them in the back. I can't help thinking it would be more efficient, though.
Most days it's just stumbling around in the dark with the rest of creation, smashing into things and wondering why it hurts.
Some fellows you have to hit with a brick to get their attention. Some you have to hit with a BIG brick.
She's just as bad as he is! God help me.
Egalitarians adjust to aristocracies just fine, as long as they get to be the aristocrats.
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.