Quotes from Lois McMaster Bujold

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

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.

If you make it plain you like people, it's hard for them to resist liking you back.

Too late, he recalled Miles's dictum that the reward for a job well done was usually a harder job.

Cecil flashed a grin. Quite. Plus your rather irritating habit of treating your superior officers as your, ah... Cecil paused, apparently groping again for just the right word. Equals? Miles hazarded. Cattle, Cecil corrected judiciously.

If you can't do what you want, do what you can.

I've got forward momentum. There's no virtue in it. It's just a balancing act. I don't dare stop.

The rule for finding plots for character-centered novels, which is to ask: 'So what's the worst possible thing I can do to *this* guy?' And then do it.

Miles clutched Quinn's elbow. Don't Panic. I'm not panicking, Quinn observed, I'm watching you panic. It's more entertaining .

Experience suggests it doesn't matter so much how you got here, as what you do after you arrive.

Endure pain, find joy, and make your own meaning, because the universe certainly isn't going to supply it.

Not that I haven't leaped up into the blinding light of competence now and then. It's sustaining the altitude that defeats me.

If the truth doesn't save us, what does that say about us?

The world demands I make good choices on no information, and then blames my maidenhood for my mistakes, as if my maidenhood were responsible for my ignorance. Ignorance is not stupidity, but it might as well be. And I do not like feeling stupid.

You go on. You just go on. There's nothing more to it, and there's no trick to make it easier. You just go on.

Poets speak of hope in ladies smiles, but give me a smirk any day, I say.

Miles exhaled carefully, faint with rage and reminded grief. He does not know, he told himself. He cannot know... Ivan, one of these days somebody is going to pull out a weapon and plug you, and you're going to die in bewilderment, crying, What did I say? What did I say? What did I say? asked Ivan indignantly.

It's important that someone celebrate our existence, she objected amiably. People are the only mirror we have to see ourselves in. The domain of all meaning. All virtue, all evil, are contained only in people. There is none in the universe at large. Solitary confinement is a punishment in every human culture.

Now, there's this about cynicism, Sergeant. It's the universe's most supine moral position. Real comfortable. If nothing can be done, then you're not some kind of shit for not doing it, and you can lie there and stink to yourself in perfect peace.

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'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.

Well, what is a blessing but a curse from another point of view?

The Imperial Service could win a war without coffee, but would prefer not to have to.

I am not a fate worse than death, dammit!