Quotes from Lois McMaster Bujold

This is a true prophecy, as true as yours ever were. When the souls rise up in glory, yours shall not be shunned nor sundered, but shall be the prize of the gods' gardens. Even your darkness shall be treasured then, and all your pain made holy.

Love was long gone, in her. She got by on a starvation diet of loyalty these days.

Luck is something you make for yourself, if you want it.

Galeni made her smile, but not laugh. The lack of any sense of play between them worried Miles. You had to have a keen sense of humor to do sex and stay sane.

inventory of night thoughts.

Once, carefully, they rode around a company of marching pike men, recruits on their way to being exported to other lords' wars. Like Drovo, Pen thought. He wondered how many would ever march home. Better it seemed to export cheese or cloth, but it was true that fortunes were made in the military trade. Though seldom by the soldiers, any more than by the cheeses.

Prayer, he suspected as he hoisted himself up and turned for the door, was putting one foot in front of the other. Moving all the same.

Inside his own head, a continuous counterpoint ran in little popping bubbles, Look! I'm engaged! Isn't she pretty? She asked me. She's smart, too. She's going to marry me. Mine, mine, all mine. I'm engaged! To be married! To this woman! an effervescence that emerged, he trusted, only as a cool, suave smile.

What makes the hallow kingship hallowed?" Ingrey hesitated so long in answering, Biast began to turn away again in disappointment, when Ingrey blurted, "Faith." And at the puzzled pinch of Biast's brows, clarified: "Keeping it.

Des said reluctantly at last, Pray to your god. He's the only other one in here besides us. Pen

antechamber with the same unsmiling abstraction.

She was alone, uninhabited, she was herself again, after five months of that strange doubled existence.

But the herm was gray-faced, lips purple-blue, eyelids fluttering. An IV pump, not dependent upon potentially erratic ship's gravity, infused yellow fluid rapidly into Bel's right arm. The left arm was strapped to a board; plastic tubing filled with blood ran from under a bandage and into a hybrid appliance bound around with quantities of plastic tape. A second tube ran back again, its dark surface moist with condensation.

There it is! Do it or I'll have (my mother) do it for you! How's that for a threat? Effective.

Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself. There is no more hollow feeling than to stand with your honor shattered at your feet while soaring public reputation wraps you in rewards. That's soul-destroying. The other way around is merely very, very irritating. Guard your honor. Let your reputation fall where it will. And outlive the bastards.

I don't . . . quite know how to put it." He searched for, and rather to his surprise found, that odd calm place inside, still there. It helped. "Some prices are just too high, no matter how much you may want the prize. The one thing you can't trade for your heart's desire is your heart." "Oh," said Gregor.

I'm sorry, Lady Vorkosigan. We'll simply have to begin at the beginning. Please bear with me. Do I understand correctly you've had some sort of female trouble?" No, most of my troubles have been with males. Cordelia bit her tongue.

Cordelia thought they looked like brothers, and had the guess confirmed when the younger said, "Look, there's Father, three seats behind old Vortala. Which one's the new regent?" "The bandy-legged character in the red and blues, just sitting down to Vortala's right." Cordelia and Vorpatril exchanged a look behind their backs, and Cordelia put a finger to her lips. Vorpatril grinned and shrugged. "What's the word on him in the Service?

Oswyl just looked exasperated. This benighted case is the strangest I ever worked on. And I'm going to have to report it all when I get home, you realize? Learned Penric's blue eyes crinkled as he grinned. You'd best pray for eloquence, then.

Silver manned the com; and Leo—held down the post of chief engineer, he supposed. The chain of command became rather blurred at this point. Perhaps his title ought to be Official Ship's Worrier.

Don't be stupid about money. Don't go for a soldier. No hitting girls. He wasn't drawn to violate any of these prohibitions. Assuming older sisters weren't classified as girls. Maybe make that, No hitting girls first.

farmer barn dances, although the

Taura would have been dead of old age at twenty-standard without the medical intervention that the Dendarii medics and later the Duronas had supplied her. Roic had met her twice, desperately memorably, the first time when she'd attended m'lord's wedding, the second when m'lord and Roic had traveled to Escobar to attend her last days in the Durona hospice.

Besides, in any country so well supplied with precipices as this one, a man doesn't need special tools to end his woes. By his expression, this, too, was a picture Oswyl would have preferred to live without.