The voices / 90 fragments

Lois McMaster Bujold

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▷ Play this voice Search within this voice ↗Place in time ↗knowledge faith justice life death mind wisdom happiness

Archive entries

01Undated

Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself.

Lois McMaster Bujold / quote

02Undated

Suicidal glory is the luxury of the irresponsible.

Lois McMaster Bujold / quote

03Undated

[Koudelka] looked back, "You?! I know you! You trust beyond reason!"[Cordelia] met his eyes steadily, "Yes, it's how I get results beyond hope, as you may recall.

Lois McMaster Bujold / quote

04Undated

Think of the glory. Think of your reputation. Think how great it'll look on your next resume."On my cenotaph, you mean. Nobody will be able to collect enough of my scattered atoms to bury. You going to cover my funeral expenses, son?"Splendidly. Banners, dancing girls, and enough beer to float your coffin to Valhalla."- Miles coaxing Ky Tung to agree to an almost suicidal mission

Lois McMaster Bujold / quote

05Undated

Lakewalker legends say the gods abandoned the world when the first malice came. And that they will return when the earth is entirely cleansed of its spawn. If you believe in gods.""Do you?""I believe they are not here, yes. It's a faith of sorts.

Lois McMaster Bujold / quote

06Undated

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

Lois McMaster Bujold / quote

07Undated

I need words that mean more than they mean, words not just with height and width, but depth and weight and, and other dimensions that I cannot even name.

Lois McMaster Bujold / quote

08Undated

In mysticism, knowledge cannot be separated from a certain way of life which becomes its living manifestation. To acquire mystical knowledge means to undergo a transformation; one could even say that the knowledge is the transformation. Scientific knowledge, on the other hand, can often stay abstract and theoretical. Thus most of today’s physicists do not seem to realize the philosophical, cultural and spiritual implications of their theories.

Lois McMaster Bujold / quote

09Undated

Women shouldn't be in combat," said Vorkosigan, grimly glum. "Neither should men, in my opinion.

Lois McMaster Bujold / quote

10Undated

Modern warfare wasn't supposed to have this much blood in it. The weapons were supposed to cook everyone neatly, like eggs in their shells. (Mark Vorkosigan's first experience with warfare, on seeing Miles Vorkosigan splattered before him)

Lois McMaster Bujold / quote

11Undated

Barrayar is bred in my bones. I cannot shake it, no matter how far I travel. This struggle, God knows, has no honor in it. But exile, for no other motive than ease—that would be to give up all hope of honor. The last defeat, with no seed of future victory in it.

Lois McMaster Bujold / quote

12Undated

I'm afraid even ImpSec has no explanation for women's tastes in men.

Lois McMaster Bujold / quote

13Undated

At some stage of development an officer had to stop following orders and start generating them.

Lois McMaster Bujold / quote

14Undated

I know girls who pine for it. They like to play dress-up and pretend being Vor ladies of old, rescued from menace by romantic Vor youths. For some reason they never play 'dying in childbirth', or 'vomiting your guts out from the red dysentery', or 'weaving till you go blind and crippled from arthritis and dye poisoning', or 'infanticide'. Well, they do die romantically of disease sometimes, but somehow it's always an illness that makes you interestingly pale and everyone sorry and doesn't involve losing bowel control.

Lois McMaster Bujold / quote

15Undated

When you give each other everything, it becomes an even trade. Each wins all.

Lois McMaster Bujold / quote

16Undated

But though you’d never starve your body to wasting and still expect to go on, you starve your heart, yet act as though you can still draw on it forever without the debt ever coming due. If you fall—when you fall, you’re going to fall like a starving man.

Lois McMaster Bujold / quote

17Undated

(Watching her) was a little like watching water lilies; rather more like smelling a dinner he was not allowed to eat. Was it possible to be starved for so long as to forget the taste of food, for the pangs of hunger to burn out like ash? It seemed so. But both the pleasure and the pain were his heart’s secret, here. He was put in mind, suddenly, of the soil at the edge of a recovering blight; the weedy bedraggled look of it, unlovely yet hopeful. Blight was a numb gray thing, without sensation. Did the return of green life hurt? Odd thought.

Lois McMaster Bujold / quote

18Undated

You don't pay back your parents. You can't. The debt you owe them gets collected by your children, who hand it down in turn. It's a sort of entailment. Or if you don't have children of the body, it's left as a debt to your common humanity. Or to your God, if you possess or are possessed by one.The family economy evades calculation in the gross planetary product. It's the only deal I know where, when you give more than you get, you aren't bankrupted - but rather, vastly enriched.

Lois McMaster Bujold / quote

19Undated

Power is better than revenge. Power is a live thing, by which you reach out to grasp the future. Revenge is a dead thing, reaching out from the past to grasp you.

Lois McMaster Bujold / quote

20Undated

Events may be horrible or inescapable. Men have always a choice - if not whether, then how, they may endure.

Lois McMaster Bujold / quote

21Undated

Don't wish to be normal. Wish to be yourself. To the hilt. Find out what you're best at, and develop it, and hopscotch your weaknesses. Wish to be great at whatever you are.

Lois McMaster Bujold / quote

22Undated

Don't let fear swallow all your happiness. Don't forget to take joy." Dag gulped. Both of their grounds were nearly closed. It was Arkady's voice alone that hinted how hard-bought this bit of wisdom might've been, yet the words had been nearly toneless.

Lois McMaster Bujold / quote

23Undated

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

Lois McMaster Bujold / quote

24Undated

Everybody has it wrong way round. Parents don't make children--children make parents. They shape our behavior from the first wail. Mold us into what they need. It can be a pretty rough process, too

Lois McMaster Bujold / quote