Lois McMaster Bujold Quotes

Vorkalloner seemed suddenly less amusing. “Why are you all so anxious to put us in a bottle, anyway?”
“Why, orders,” said Vorkalloner simply, like an ancient fundamentalist who answers every question with the tautology, “Because God made it that way.” Then a little agnostic doubt began to creep over his face. “Actually, I thought we might have been sent out here on guard duty as some kind of punishment,” he joked.
The remark caught Vorkosigan’s humor. “For your sins? Your cosmology is too egocentric, Aristede”

Captains may come and captains may go, but the administration goes on forever.

They stared at her curiously and she caught snatches of conversation in two or three languages. It wasn’t hard to guess their content, and she smiled a bit grimly. 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 at the end.

“We were told the Betans killed you, sir,” he said suspiciously.
“Yes, it’s a rumor I’ve had difficulty living down,” said Vorkosigan. “You can see it’s not true.”
“Your funeral was splendid,” said Koudelka. “You should have been there.”
“Next time, perhaps,” Vorkosigan grinned.
“Oh. You know I didn’t mean it that way, sir. Lieutenant Radnov made the best speech.”
“I’m sure. He’d probably been working on it for months.”

I had a teacher who used to reflect back my questions that way. I thought it was the Socratic method, and it impressed me immensely, until I found out he used it whenever he didn’t know the answer.

“Seems to me the only difference between your friends and your enemies is how long they stand around chatting before they shoot you.”
“Yes,” Vorkosigan agreed, “I could take over the universe with this army if I could ever get all their weapons pointed in the same direction.”

She took the story in like some strange, spiked gift, too fragile to drop, too painful to hold.

The old customs are dead, and we keep trying on new ones, like badly fitting clothes.

Even after four days of oatmeal and blue cheese dressing, they were a disappointment.
“Are you sure this isn’t instant boots?” asked Cordelia.

I suppose my determination to be a soldier stems from that date. I mean the real thing, not the parades and the uniforms and the glamour, but the logistics, the offensive advantage, the speed and surprise—the power. A better-prepared, stronger, tougher, faster, meaner son-of-a-bitch than any who came through that door.

Save me from that! To pour your life into sons for eighteen or twenty years, and then have the government take them away and waste them cleaning up after some failure of politics—no thanks.

If it ever came down to exerting power by force, it would mean I’d already lost it.

Leadership is mostly a power over imagination, and never more so than in combat. The bravest man alone can only be an armed lunatic. The real strength lies in the ability to get others to do your work.

“Smoke test?...What’s that?”...
“It’s an ancient and honorable term for the final step in any engineering project,” Leo explained. “Turn it on, see if it smokes.”

He gave himself up to God and pressed the button.