Quotes from Lois McMaster Bujold

It made her furious. All Kareen's courage of endurance had given her nothing. Lady Vorpatril's brave and bloody birth-giving was taken for granted, but whack off some idiot's head and you were really somebody, by God--!

Leo will be coming with us," Emma offered, trying to sound optimistic. "He's a downsider." "I'm not sure that's exactly his field of expertise," said Claire honestly, trying to picture Leo as a medtech. He didn't care for hydraulic systems, he'd said.

Cordelia faced one more climb onto that torture-device for humans and horses called a saddle.

I had to explain to them that the Bastard does not ever execute unrepentant sinners with a dirk, nor a large hammer.

Patience and exhaustion turn out to have a lot in common.

Miles repented his younger sexual reticence altogether, now. Profoundly. We should have taken our chances back then, when we were young and beautiful and didn't even know it. And Bel had been beautiful, in its own ironic way, living and moving at ease in a body athletic, healthy, and trim.

I'm not saying you were wrong, Royesse. This time. I'm saying you were running blindfolded. And if it wasn't headlong into a tree, it was only by the mercy of the gods, and not by any care of yours.

A true Vor, Miles told himself severely, does not bury his face in his liegewoman's breasts and cry—even if he is at a convenient height for it.

They were taking Elli away. "Don't worry, Miles, I've been arrested before," she tried to reassure him. "It's no big deal.

He blew out his breath and sat back. He'd almost wished for some clever evil plot, which they could then engage to out-clever. It could be surprisingly hard to counter Plain Stupid. Even by heroic measures.

I'm frightened all the time, yet I can't wish myself elsewhere.

But she was my project—I must answer for her— No. She's a free woman now. She must answer for herself. How free can she ever be, in that body, driven by that metabolism, that face—a freak's life—better to die painlessly, than to have all that suffering inflicted on her— Miles spoke through his teeth. With emphasis. No. It's. Not. Canaba stared at him, shaken out of the rutted circle of his unhappy reasoning at last.

I do not have a claustrophobia thing. I have a perfectly rational dislike of being locked up in small, dark, wet spaces by people trying to kill me.

Paranoid?" she inquired solicitously. "Getting more so by the minute. Having Mad Emperor Yuri in my family tree doesn't help a bit. I'm always wondering if I'm starting to come down with his disease. Can you be paranoid about being paranoid?" She smiled sweetly. "If anyone can, it's you.

Bothari nearly choked at the suggestion. "I swear I'll knock you down and sit on you if you go near those suits," he snarled. "Insubordination, Sergeant," Miles hissed back.

Feared that she was slated to be dragged though all that stale guilt

The last thing a monster wanted was a fellow to follow him around all day long with a mirror.

I figure we can tell events exactly as they happened, just leave out that one tiny detail." "You figure, do you? You must be using a different kind of math than the rest of the universe does.

The cruelty and selfishness that make lust vile become tedious. But personally, I think it is not so much the growth of virtue, as simply the replacement of prior vices with an addiction to one's god.

You must go home eventually. I would throw myself off a precipice first, except that I would land in the arms of the gods, Whom I do not wish to see again.

Could he stop denying himself, and deny others instead? He tested the phrases on his tongue. No, you are wrong, all of you, Temple and Court and folk in the streets. You always were wrong. I am not…am not… what? And are these the only terms I can think in, these shouted nos? Ah, habit.

What can the gods give me?" His brows twitched up in an expression of remarkably disingenuous goodwill. "Why, work, sweet Ista!

He pinpointed the reservoir from the man's pilot relief tube, already half-full. "Must be a nervous sort of fellow—" He set it to backwash at full power, and checked the audio transmitter. Savage swearing filled the air briefly, overridden by a snarl calling for radio silence. "Now, there is one distracted soldier.

Not one, she realized with a chill, was staring at her as though she had gone mad. They were all staring at her as though she was going to tell them what to do next.