Quotes by Lois McMaster Bujold

I wanted to give you a victory. But by their essential nature triumphs can’t be given.

God save me from another such victory.

The strangeness of the Barrayaran government system with all its unwritten customs, pressed on Cordelia not so much as first glance but gradually. And yet it seemed to work for them somehow. They made it work, pretending a government into existence. Perhaps all governments were all consensus fictions at their hearts.

Lord X was a tyrant, not a revolutionary. He wanted to take over the system, not change it.

When I was a wee little kid, remarked Roic, watching over their shoulders, there was a time I thought that any skinny old man I saw was my grandfather. It was pretty confusing.

Apologizing to me again, thought Miles miserably. For me. He keeps telling me Im all right—and then apologizing. Inconsistent, Father.He shuffled back and forth across the room again, and his pain burst into speech. He flung his words against the deaf door, Ill make you take back that apology! I am all right, damn it! Ill make you see it. Ill stuff you so full of pride in me therell be no room left for your precious guilt! I swear by my word as Vorkosigan. I swear it, Father, his voice fell to a whisper, Grandfather. Somehow, I dont know how . . .

They stared at her curiously, and she caught snatches of conversation in two or three languages. It wasnt hard to guess their content, and she smiled a bit primly. Youth, it appeared, was full of illusions as to how much sexual energy two people might have to spare while hiking forty or so kilometers a day, concussed, stunned, diseased, on poor food and little sleep, alternating caring for a wounded man with avoiding becoming dinner for every carnivore within range - and with a coup to plan for the end.

It wasnt a case of storming heaven. It was a case of letting heaven storm you.

But personally, I think [sainthood] is not so much the growth of virtue, as simply the replacement of prior vices with an addiction to ones god.

If there’s no game, isnt winning a pretty meaningless concept?

He was shaken by an unwelcome insight. Lives did not add as integers. They added as infinities.

It’s a . . . transcendental act. Making life. . . . ‘By this act, I bring one death into the world.’ One birth, one death, and all the pain and acts of will between. . . . Our children change us . . . whether they live or not.

Hunting hawks did not belong in cages, no matter how much a man coveted their grace, no matter how golden the bars. They were far more beautiful soaring free. Heartbreakingly beautiful.

His master plan to get them all out the door early met its first check of the day when he opened his closet door to discover that Zap the Cat, having penetrated the security of Vorkosigan House through Miless quisling cook, had made a nest on the floor among his boots and fallen clothing to have kittens. Six of them.Zap ignored his threats about the dire consequences of attacking an Imperial Auditor, and purred and growled from the dimness in her usual schizophrenic fashion. Miles gathered his nerve and rescued his best boots and House uniform, at a cost of some high Vor blood, and sent them downstairs for a hasty cleaning by the overworked Armsman Pym. The Countess, delighted as ever to find her biological empire increasing, came in thoughtfully bearing a cat-gourmet tray prepared by Ma Kosti that Miles would have had no hesitation in eating for his own breakfast. In the general chaos of the morning, however, he had to go down to the kitchen and scrounge his meal. The Countess sat on the floor and cooed into his closet for a good half-hour, and not only escaped laceration, but managed to pick up, sex, and name the whole batch of little squirming furballs before tearing herself away to hurry and dress.

The book is not an object on the table; it is an event in the readers mind. Its a process, through which an idea in my mind triggers an idea, more-or-less corresponding, in yours. The words on the page are merely the means to that end, a think-by-numbers set, a bottled daydream. The book, therefore, is only finished when someone reads it. - Sidelines

There is a sad disconnectedness that overcomes a library when its owner is gone.

The dead cannot cry out for justice. It is a duty of the living to do so for them.

I think 99 percent of womens lib comes from technology making different kinds of lives possible, and then the social adjustment follows the technology - it doesnt precede it.

“This is a true prophecy, as true as yours ever were. When the souls rise up in glory, yours shall not be shunned nor sundered, but shall be the prize of the gods gardens. Even your darkness shall be treasured then, and all your pain made holy.”

“Suicidal glory is the luxury of the irresponsible.”