Lois McMaster Bujold Quotes

His mother had often said, When you choose an action, you choose the consequences of that action. She had emphasized the corollary of this axiom even more vehemently: when you desired a consequence you had damned well better take the action that would create it.

I'm not getting it all sorted, she worried. I'm not getting it right.
You are brilliant, the Voice reassured her.
It is imperfect.
So are all things trapped in time. You are brilliant, nonetheless. How fortunate for Us that We thirst for glorious souls rather than faultless ones, or We should be parched indeed, and most lonely in Our perfect righteousness. Carry on imperfectly, shining Ista.

“If you can’t win, change the game.”
Ivan twitched a brow upward. “If there’s no game, isn’t winning a pretty meaningless concept?”

Aim high. You may still miss the target, but at least you won't shoot your foot off.

"And the Bastard grant us . . . in our direst need, the smallest gifts: the nail of the horseshoe, the pin of the axle, the feather at the pivot point, the pebble at the mountain's peak, the kiss in despair, the one right word. In darkness, understanding."

"No, no, never send interim reports," said Miles. "Only final ones. Interim reports tend to elicit orders. Which you must then either obey, or spend valuable time and energy evading, which you could be using to solve the problem."

How could you be a Great Man if history brought you no Great Events, or brought you to them at the wrong time, too young, too old? Too damaged.

"The gods would take him and leave me bereft, and I curse them!" "I have cursed them for years," said Ista dryly. "Turnabout being fair."

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

The princess-archdivine once quipped to me that our friends are what the gods give us to make up for our families.

So in the physics of the heart, distance is relative; it’s time that’s absolute.

I am who I choose to be. I have always been what I chose, though not always what I pleased.

One learns better than to hand one’s choices to fear. With age, with every wound and scar, one learns.

The trick of handling horses isn’t to be faster than the horse, or stronger than the horse. That pits your weakness against his strengths. The trick is to be smarter than the horse. That pits your strength against his weakness, eh?

I’ve always felt that theists were more ruthless than atheists.