Lois McMaster Bujold Quotes

Stupidity, yes, but not unilateral stupidity. Something this screwed up had to have taken a committee.

“For all you Betans seem soft, you have an appalling cold-blooded streak in you.”
“Rational streak, sir. Rationality has its merits. You Barrayarans ought to try it sometime.”

“What a barbaric custom.”
“Well, we could treat crime as a disease, like you Betans. You know what that’s like. At least we kill a man cleanly, all at once, instead of in bits over the years….I don’t know.”
“How will they…do it?”
“Beheading. It’s supposed to be almost painless.”
“How do they know?”
His laugh was totally without humor. “A very cogent question.”

You can’t choose between evil and evil, in the dark, by logic. You can only cling to some safety line of principle.

Check your assumptions, Cordelia thought to herself in amusement. In fact, check your assumptions at the door.

“Don’t be afraid,” she said. “The dead cannot hurt you. They give you no pain, except that of seeing your own death in their faces. And one can face that, I find.”
Yes, he thought, the good face pain. But the great—they embrace it.

What a strange world you must live in, inside your head.

A person’s things can be a kind of exterior morphology of their mind.

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

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. Do you understand what I’m saying?

“Ah, yes. I recall from your file that you are some sort of theist.” said the Emperor. “I am an atheist, myself. A simple faith, but a great comfort to me, in these last days.”
“Yes, I have often felt the pull of it myself.”

Why shouldn’t a madman dream of being sane?

“Women shouldn’t be in combat,” said Vorkosigan, grimly glum.
“Neither should men, in my opinion.”

“So this word of honor business—you believe he never breaks it?”
“Well…”
“He does, then.”
“I have seen him do so. But the cost was huge.”
“He breaks it for a price, then.”
“Not for a price. At a cost.”
“I fail to see the distinction.”
“A price is something you get. A cost is something you lose.”

“Well, I don’t hate him. I can’t say I worship him, either.” She paused a long time, and looked up to meet her mother’s eyes squarely. “But when he’s cut, I bleed.”