Lois McMaster Bujold Quotes

Sometimes, insanity is not a tragedy. Sometimes, it’s a strategy for survival. Sometimes...it’s a triumph.

He’s not so short,” said Ekaterin defensively. “He’s just . . . concentrated.” Her

The facts appear to be mutating every forty minutes. like bacteria.

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."

Second sight is redundant to reason anyway.

The deadly weapon seemed unnaturally light and easy in his hand. Something that lethal should have more heft, like a broadsword. Wrong, for murder to be so potentially effortless—one ought to at least have to grunt for it.

"Wait." He paused, and she held out a hand to him. His thick fingers engulfed her tapering ones; his skin was warm and dry, and scorched her. "Before we go pick up poor Lieutenant Illyan again..."

He took her in his arms, and they kissed, for the first time, for a long time.

"Oh," she muttered after. "Perhaps that was a mistake. It hurts so much when you stop."

"Well, let me..." his hand stroked her hair, gently, then desperately wrapped itself in a shimmering coil; they kissed again.

If power was an illusion, wasn't weakness necessarily one also?

The trouble with synopsized information was that it was always so nebulous. The devil was in the details, the raw data; embedded therein were all the tiny clues that fed the intuition demon until it became strong and fat and, sometimes, grew up to become an actual Theory, or even a Proof.

Children might or might not be a blessing, but to create them and then fail them was surely damnation.

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.

I saw no reason to stop my life for other people’s theories.

It's a bizarre but wonderful feeling, to arrive dead center of a target you didn't even know you were aiming for.

It still felt like hauling buckets from a well of memory with a rope that burned his hands.

It could be surprisingly hard to counter Plain Stupid. Even by heroic measures.