Quotes from Lois McMaster Bujold

One gives you the shirt off his back, mused Des, and the other offers to help you bury bodies. I do believe you have made some new friends, Pen!

Pain, like time, is going to come on regardless. Question is, what glorious moments can you win from life in addition to the pain?

And then his world turned into a pelting rain of flaming snot.

Some men just aren't cut for paternity. Better they should realize it before and not after they become responsible for a son.

Not only was Ivan an idiot, but he generated a telepathic damping field that turned people nearby into idiots, too. He would point this out to Barrayaran Intelligence, who would make of his cousin the newest weapon in their arsenal—if

Roic said nothing, firmly.

He was shaken by an unwelcome insight. Lives did not add as integers. They added as infinities. I

She considered the familiar conundrum inherent in complimenting a child for doing something well in the course of what ought not to have been done at all, and kept her peace.

When the man arises who can make you laugh, solemn Ista, angry Ista, iron Ista, then will your heart be healed. You have not prayed for this: it's a guerdon even the gods cannot give you. We are limited to such simples as redemption from your sins.

The strangeness of the Barrayaran government system with all its unwritten customs, pressed on Cordelia not so much as first glance but gradually. And yet it seemed to work for them somehow. They made it work, pretending a government into existence. Perhaps all governments were all consensus fictions at their hearts.

Something I did not know at twenty," said Nikys slowly, "that I do know at thirty, is that when a woman marries a man, she marries his life. And it had better be the life she wants to lead.

Lady Peace is the first hostage taken when economic discomfort rises.

You know, if you're trying to take a roomful of people by surprise, it's a lot easier to hit your targets if you don't yell going through the door.

Some attitudes couldn't be changed, they just had to be outlived

Never," said Kareen with passion, "ever suggest they don't have to pay you. What they pay for, they'll value. What they get for free, they'll take for granted

Only the saints would joke so about the gods, because it was either joke or scream, and they alone knew it was all the same to the gods.

Change is a function of time and experience, and time is implacable.

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

If he ever does do himself in, I'm betting it'll be something that involves large explosions. And lots of innocent bystanders, probably.

Divide the infinite future into five-minute blocks, and take them one by one.

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

Beloved, god-touched, great-souled… a saint, even?  The true sort, who moved through the world as silently as fishes, unnoticed by carnal eyes that focused only on outward domination and display.  Never on a small woman in a small town, being kind.  Soul by soul.

We just try to go from day to day. Surprising where you can end up, that way.

I have had another thought on such fates that denies neither gods nor man. Perhaps, instead of controlling every step, the gods have started a hundred or a thousand Cazarils and Umegats down this road, and only those arrive who choose to.