Quotes from Lois McMaster Bujold

A saint is not a virtuous soul, but an empty one. He—or she—freely gives the gift of their will to their god. And in renouncing action, makes action possible.

How had he rehearsed this vitally-important, utterly-critical meeting, again? Mother, Father, let me introduce -- she's getting away!

When your young life offered its first disaster, naturally it loomed large. After you'd survived dozens, you basically just told the next one to take a number and get in line.

But personally, I think [sainthood] is not so much the growth of virtue, as simply the replacement of prior vices with an addiction to one's god.

Arhys would have protected you from this choice, as a father would a beloved child. Arhys is wrong in this. I give you a woman's choice, here, at the last gasp. He looks to spare you pain this one night. I look to your nights for the next twenty years. There is neither right nor wrong in this, precisely. But the time to amend all choices runs out like Porifors's water.

I had to discover and teach myself all kinds of tricks to get people to respond to the inside of me, and not the outside.

If only one didn't know that at the secret heart of all such organizations, corporations and governments alike, it still came down to a finite number of fallible people talking to each other . . . ?

If there's no game, isn't winning a pretty meaningless concept?

Women do desperately need models for power other than the maternal.

Mia Maz glanced aside in concern at his muffled snort. Are you all right? Yes. Sorry, he whispered. I'm just having an attack of limericks. Her eyes widened, and she bit her lip; only her deepening dimple betrayed her. Shhh, she said, with feeling.

Once, she had been her parents' daughter. Then great, unlucky Ias's wife. Her children's mother. At the last, her mother's keeper. Well, I am none of these things now. Who am I, when I am not surrounded by the walls of my life?

There's all of us adults, and one of him. We ought to be able to keep up. Why do I feel like he has us outnumbered and surrounded?

Miles leaned forward and spoke earnestly into the secure holovid recorder. I just want you to know, Gregor, that if the planet melts down over all this, it wasn't my fault. The trip-wire was laid long before I stumbled across it.

How like a man, to change from mask to mask like a player, concealing all intention, yet leave his heart out on the table, carelessly, unregarded, for all to behold.

Actually, the full bell curve goes: brilliant; pretty good; mediocre; mediocre and interminable; dire; vile; dire and vile; and dire, vile, and interminable.

Her smile grew bitter as desert brine. The gods may forgive Ista all day long. But if Ista does not forgive Ista, the gods may go hang themselves.

He said that permitting private judgments to turn my duty in the smallest matter would be just like getting a little bit pregnant -- that the consequences would very soon get beyond me.

To a man of certain age... all young ladies start to look delightful. It's the first symptom of senility.

Cute-and-furry was always an easier sell than carapaced-and-multilegged, for some obscure reason. Grownups, so unreasonable...

to slide halfway to stupid and stop was rare indeed.

The gods do not grant miracles for our purposes, but for theirs. If you are become their tool, it is for a greater reason, an urgent reason. But you are the tool. You are not the work.

There is a sad disconnectedness that overcomes a library when its owner is gone.

Lakewalker legends say the gods abandoned the world when the first malice came. And that they will return when the earth is entirely cleansed of its spawn. If you believe in gods. Do you? I believe they are not here, yes. It's a faith of sorts.

I always thought my parents could fix anything. Now it's my turn. Dear God, how did this happen?