Quotes from Lois McMaster Bujold

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.

He gave me no sign. I was never the sort to receive portents, or to delude myself that I had. Silence was always my portion, in return for my prayers.

A good friend of my son's is a son to me.

Hunting hawks do not belong in cages, no matter how much a man covets their grace, no matter how golden the bars. They are far more beautiful soaring free. Heartbreakingly beautiful.

Since no one is perfect, it follows that all great deeds have been accomplished out of imperfection.

When you can't get what you want, you take what you can get.

Hands are integral with brains, almost another lobe for intelligence. What one does not know through one's hands, one does not truly know.

If you ever have to make a choice between learning and inspiration, choose learning. It works more of the time.

Surely only correct understanding could lead to correct action.

I don't confuse greatness with perfection. To be great anyhow isthe higher achievement.

I cannot emphasize enough that I do not start with a plan or agenda and mechanically manipulate characters and events to carry it out. I set characters in motion, and let them teach me what the book is.

I've described my usual writing process as scrambling from peak to peak on inspiration through foggy valleys of despised logic. Inspiration is better when you can get it.

Exile, for no other motive than ease, would be the last defeat, with no seed of future victory in it.

You couldn't be that good and not know it, somewhere in your secret heart, however much you'd been abused into affecting public humility.

Marriage was a lottery, and you drew your lot in late adolescence or early adulthood at a point of maximum idiocy and confusion.

If suspicion was the deadliest possible insult, then trust was always right, even if it was mistaken.

Total strangers trying to kill me make me feel right at home.

When you can see the colors of the feathers, you'll also understand how you can expand your borders to infinity.

There is a subtle difference between being a prisoner and being a slave. I don't mistake either for being free.

War is not its own end, except in some catastrophic slide into absolute damnation. It's peace that's wanted. Some better peace than the one you started with.

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

Suicidal glory is the luxury of the irresponsible. We're not giving up. We're waiting for a better opportunity to win.

You can say a lot in a little time, if you stick to words of one syllable.

Don't be afraid. The dead cannot hurt you. They give you no pain, except that of seeing your own death in their faces. And one can face that, I find.