Quotes from Lois McMaster Bujold

don't know why you Betans put on soldiers' uniforms. You're no better trained than children on a picnic. If your ranks denote anything but pay scale, it's not apparent to me.

Ivan didn't want to know. "You play games like that with the big boys, you'd better make damn sure you win, Miles says. Rule One. And there is no Rule Two.

It was wonderful to imagine letting go one's guard, if only for a moment. To pretend that safety was something another could give as a gift.

Miles. I have to talk to you." "Just a minute." The minute became two or three or four, as he leaned against the doorframe and scuffed his boot on the patterned carpet. He knocked again. "C'mon, Simon, let me in." "Don't be so impatient, Miles," his aunt's voice admonished him firmly. "It's a bit rude." He

The president of the League of Women Voters and the Chairwoman of the Sully Township Concerned Citizens' Committee were rumored to be close to trial by combat in city council meetings.

The bruised civilian interrupted, pointing at Elena. "Screw him! This woman assaulted me! There were a dozen witnesses. Damn it, I want her charged. She's vicious." Elena had her hands over her ears again, lower lip stuck out but trembling slightly. Miles began to get the picture. "Did you hit him?" She

it indicates a deep confusion of thinking to mistake one's own discomfort for a benefit to another.

Which way would she pounce? Miles held his breath. Ekaterin leaned forward, gripping the railing with her knuckles going pale. "Let's finish this. Lord Vorkosigan!" Miles jerked in his seat, taken by surprise. "Madame?" He made a little half-bow gesture. "Yours to command . . ." "Good. Will you marry me?

The second ward was declared a temporary holding cell for their prisoner, the ba, who followed in the procession, bound to a float pallet. Miles scowled as the pallet drifted past, towed on its control lead by a watchful, muscular sergeant.

There is nothing, nothing, nothing more important to me in the men and women I train than their absolute personal integrity. Whether you function as welders or inspectors, the laws of physics are implacable lie detectors. You may fool men. You will never fool the metal. That's all.

A woman with experience keeping fool men alive might do the trick." "Des!" He convulsed to a sitting position. "What, you're the one who's been mooning after her hips for the past fortnight. So do something about it.

My father has been accused of many things, but stupidity has never, I believe, been one of them.

Leo aimed toward the Habitat, and Phase II of his Jumpships-Repaired-While-U-Wait scheme.

You will never regret having done so. But you may deeply regret not having done so.

Was that supposed to be a concession? "You can be told the whole truth all day long, but if you won't believe it, then no, I don't suppose you ever will know it." He bared his teeth in a non-smile.

She looked down at Miles, though, and her lips softened with a helpless smile. Miles grinned back like a loon; Richars's blackest glare in his direction slid off him as though deflected by a force field.

The things one learns on a honeymoon. Now I know how to coax you out of your glum moods. Just hire someone to shoot at you." "Peps me right up," he agreed. "I figured out years ago that I was addicted to adrenaline. I also figured out that it was going to be toxic, eventually, if I didn't taper off." "Indeed." She inhaled.

Her lips curved up. "That's very Ingrey of you, Ingrey. Always look on the dark side." "Someone has to be realistic, in the midst of this madness!" Now her brows rose, too. She was laughing at him. "Utterly bleak and black is not the sum of realism. All the other colors are real, too. It was my undeserved redemption as well.

This is not a date, you idiot," Tej snapped at him. To her annoyance, his smile inexplicably broadened.

Dr. Yei," Bannerji objected, "if you're trying to knock a man out you've got to hit him a lot harder than that." Yei recoiled fearfully as Van Atta surged up out of his seat. "I didn't want to risk killing him . . ." "Why not?" muttered Bannerji under his breath. Furiously

Wear it around your neck," his mother told him anxiously. "I hear those cutpurses in the cities can have away with a purse off a man's belt and he never feels a tug.

Miles paused at the door. "Ah—about Tav Calhoun—" "Yes?" "You know that janitor's closet on the second level?" "Vaguely." She looked at him in unease. "Please be sure somebody checks it tomorrow morning. But don't go up there before then." "I wouldn't dream of it," she assured him faintly.

Then he had accused her of sleeping with her women friends. That had broken something in her at last, some will to desire his good opinion. How could you argue sense into someone who believed something not because it was true, but because he was an idiot?

No amount of panicky protestation or indignant denial or futile attempt to prove a negative was likely to help, because the problem was not in the accused, but in the accuser.