Quotes from Lois McMaster Bujold

I realize now why I never saw saints, before. The world does not crash upon their wills like waves upon a rock, or part around them like the wake of a ship. Instead they are supple, and swim through the world as silently as fishes.

I'm not so in love with facts as I used to be. Sometimes, they bite.

Vorkosigan probably knew how, she reflected bitterly. Just like a man, to be underfoot in her life for days and then a quarter of a solar system away when she really needed him.

The gods have no hands but ours, they say." He held up his fingers and wiggled them.

If the gods saw people's souls but not their bodies, in mirror to the way people saw bodies but not souls, it might explain why the gods were so careless of such things as appearance, or other bodily functions. Such as pain? Was pain an illusion, from the gods' point of view? Perhaps heaven was not a place, but merely an angle of view, a vantage, a perspective.

The really unforgivable acts are committed by calm men in beautiful green silk rooms, who deal death wholesale, by the shipload, without lust, or anger, or desire, or any redeeming emotion to excuse them but cold fear of some pretended future. But the crimes they hope to prevent in that future are imaginary. The ones they commit in the present—they are real." His voice fell, as he spoke, so that by the end he was almost whispering.

She was not, she thought, quite fool enough or mad enough to wish for bandits instead. Maybe that was the trouble; maybe she just wasn't crazed enough. True derangement stopped at no boundaries.

The world is not always so friendly a place that you can afford to squander your advantages on a pointless conceit.

So"—Miles swallowed—"what happens now, sirs? Will I be charged with high treason?" "For the second time in four years?" said Illyan. "Hell, no. I'm not going through that again. I will simply disappear you, until this blows over. Where to, I haven't quite figured yet. Kyril Island is out.

How could I have died and gone to hell without noticing the transition?

I did not know what a prison I was in, till I was freed.

The world is made by the people who show up for the job," Miles agreed.

The sickening crunch threw Penric out of his coffin-sized bunk and onto the deck of his scarcely larger cabin, and from deep sleep into frantically confused consciousness in the same moment.

As Miles followed Ruibal out the door, he heard Illyan's voice, for a change more amiable than stressed: "Ivan, you idiot. What are you doing here?

If there is one thing that I have come to hate more than the gods, it is time.

Miles nodded agreement in principle, even though he was inclined to include Ivan himself in the category of my God the company.

DISMOUNTED AGAIN BACK IN THE FLORAL ENTRY COURT, ISTA WAS just trying to decide whether she was annoyed or glad for Lady Cattilara's delicately worded suggestion that perhaps a lady of the royina's age would care for an afternoon nap

Cordelia shook her head helplessly. "You would. A vote. Right." She buried her face in her hands a moment, and sobbed a laugh. "Why?" she asked through her fingers.

Back in what he was starting to think of as their cabinet, Miles encountered Ekaterin returning from the shower, dressed again in her red tunic and leggings. They maneuvered for a kiss, and he said, "I've acquired an involuntary appointment. I have to go stationside almost immediately." "You will remember to put on pants?" He glanced down at his bare legs. "Planned to, yeah.

It's the first article in the constitution. 'Access to information shall not be abridged.

For the courage of her heart, which I saw face down the greatest horrors I know without breaking. For the high and hungry intelligence of her mind, which never stops asking questions, nor thinking about the answers. For the spark of her spirit, which could teach bonfires how to burn. That's three. Enough for going on with. All this is set beside me, and you ask me instead if I want dirt? I do not understand farmers

You are what you do. Choose again, and change.

Only five days on this benighted world, and already total strangers are trying to kill me. Sadly, it wasn't even a record.

Mark has everything to do with this! If you hadn't gone downside after him, you would never have been killed. And you wouldn't have been left with some damned cryonic short circuit in your head. You may think he's the greatest invention since the Necklin drive, but I loathe the fat little creep!" "Well, I like the fat little creep! Somebody has to. I swear, you are frigging jealous. Don't be such a damned cast-iron bitch!" They