110+ Lois McMaster Bujold Quotes On Writing, Universe And Order

Lois McMaster Bujold is an American author of science fiction and fantasy literature. She is best known for her Vorkosigan Saga series of novels and short stories set in a common fictional universe. Bujold has also written other works, including the Chalion Series and the Sharing Knife tetralogy. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Lois McMaster Bujold on leadership, love, life.

Top 10 Lois McMaster Bujold Quotes

1. Poets speak of hope in ladies smiles, but give me a smirk any day, I say.
2. Don't wish to be normal. Wish to be yourself. To the hilt. Find out what you're best at, and develop it, and hopscotch your weaknesses. Wish to be great at whatever you are.
3. Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself.
4. I'm very interested in the impact of biotechnology on the way people live.
5. Aim high. You may still miss the target, but at least you won't shoot your foot off.
6. When you give each other everything, it becomes an even trade. Each wins all.
7. I've got forward momentum. There's no virtue in it. It's just a balancing act. I don't dare stop.
8. Adversity does teach who your real friends are.
9. There are always survivors at a massacre. Among the victors, if nowhere else.
10. It's an ancient and honorable term for the final step in any engineering project. Turn it on, see if it smokes.

Lois McMaster Bujold Short Quotes

• You try to give away what you want yourself.
• Guard your honor. Let your reputation fall where it will. And outlive the bastards.
• I don't confuse greatness with perfection. To be great anyhow is the higher achievement.
• Change is possible.' 'Change is inevitable.
• If you can't do what you want, do what you can.
• The principle difference between heaven and hell is the company you keep there.
• A good friend of my son's is a son to me.
• An honor is not diminished for being shared.
• I am an atheist, myself. A simple faith, but a great comfort to me, in these last days.
• You can say a lot in a little time, if you stick to words of one syllable.

Lois McMaster Bujold Quotes About Love

A stunning first impression was not the same thing as love at first sight. But surely it was an invitation to consider the matter. — Lois McMaster Bujold

You should have fallen in love with a happy man, if you wanted happiness. But no, you had to fall for the breathtaking beauty of pain. — Lois McMaster Bujold

I'm sorry. I can love you. I can grieve for you, or with you. I can share your pain. But I cannot judge you. — Lois McMaster Bujold

I've always tried to write the kind of book I most loved to read: character-centered adventure. — Lois McMaster Bujold

Honesty is the only way with anyone, when you'll be so close as to be living inside each other's skins. — Lois McMaster Bujold

Your father calls you to his court. You need not pack. You go garbed in glorious raiment. He waits eagerly by his palace doors to welcome you, and has prepared a place at the high table, by his side, in the company of the great-souled, honored, and best-beloved. — Lois McMaster Bujold

Like integrity, love of life was not a subject to be studied, it was a contagion to be caught. And you had to catch it from someone who had it. — Lois McMaster Bujold

Lois McMaster Bujold Quotes About Life

But pain seems to me an insufficient reason not to embrace life. Being dead is quite painless. Pain, like time, is going to come on regardless. Question is, what glorious moments can you win from life in addition to the pain? — Lois McMaster Bujold

My home is not a place, it is people. — Lois McMaster Bujold

Miles added it to his life's lessons list. Call it Rule 27B. Never make key tactical decisions while having electro-convulsive seizures. — Lois McMaster Bujold

Some men just aren't cut out for paternity. Better they should realize it before and not after they become responsible for a son. — Lois McMaster Bujold

I'm the one that's got to die when it's time for me to die, so let me live my life the way I want to.” - Jimi Hendrix, “The dead cannot cry out for justice. It is a duty of the living to do so for them. — Lois McMaster Bujold

Most people go through their whole lives without killing anybody. False argument. — Lois McMaster Bujold

Lois McMaster Bujold Quotes About Writing

One of the best things about writing is how it redeems, not to mention recycles, all of one's prior experiences, including or perhaps especially the failures. — Lois McMaster Bujold

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. — Lois McMaster Bujold

I began my writing career in a very isolated place and time. — Lois McMaster Bujold

For me, writing is more a process of discovering the book than planning it. — Lois McMaster Bujold

Lois McMaster Bujold Quotes About Universe

Do it for yourself. The universe will be around to collect its cut later. — Lois McMaster Bujold

I spent my 20s working in patient care at a large university hospital, an experience that has informed all my work and has given me a lot of human observation to draw on. — Lois McMaster Bujold

Endure pain, find joy, and make your own meaning, because the universe certainly isn't going to supply it. — Lois McMaster Bujold

Yes," Vorkosigan agreed, "I could take over the universe with this army if I could ever get all their weapons pointed in the same direction. — Lois McMaster Bujold

Lois McMaster Bujold Quotes About Thoughtful

I've always thought tests are a gift. And great tests are a great gift. To fail the test is a misfortune. But to refuse the test is to refuse the gift, and something worse, more irrevocable, than misfortune. — Lois McMaster Bujold

Any man can be kind when he is comfortable. I'd always thought kindness a trivial virtue, therefore. But when we were hungry, thirsty, sick, frightened, with our deaths shouting at us, in the heart of horror, you were still as unfailingly courteous as a gentleman at ease before his own hearth. — Lois McMaster Bujold

For a while, I thought I was going mad. At last, I became reconciled to my despair. The medications helped, too, I thought, sir. — Lois McMaster Bujold

One corner of his mouth crooked up, then the quirk vanished in a thoughtful pursing of his lips. "He's bisexual, you know." He took a delicate sip of his wine. "Was bisexual," she corrected absently, looking fondly across the room. "Now he's monogamous." Vordarian choked, sputtering. — Lois McMaster Bujold

Lois McMaster Bujold Quotes About Stupidity

Ignorance is not stupidity, but it might as well be. And I do not like feeling stupid. — Lois McMaster Bujold

The world demands I make good choices on no information, and then blames my maidenhood for my mistakes, as if my maidenhood were responsible for my ignorance. Ignorance is not stupidity, but it might as well be. And I do not like feeling stupid. — Lois McMaster Bujold

The will to be stupid is a very powerful force, but there are always alternatives. — Lois McMaster Bujold

Lois McMaster Bujold Famous Quotes And Sayings

Any communitys arm of force - military, police, security - needs people in it who can do necessary evil, and yet not be made evil by it. To do only the necessary and no more. To constantly question the assumptions, to stop the slide into atrocity. — Lois McMaster Bujold

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. — Lois McMaster Bujold

I need words that mean more than they mean, words not just with height and width, but depth and weight and, and other dimensions that I cannot even name. — Lois McMaster Bujold

Have you ever heard the phrase, Living well is the best revenge?" "Where I come from, someone's head in a bag is generally considered the best revenge — Lois McMaster Bujold

I don’t duel, boy. I kill as a soldier kills, which is as a butcher kills, as quickly, efficiently, and with as least risk to myself as I can arrange. — Lois McMaster Bujold

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. — Lois McMaster Bujold

Miles exhaled carefully, faint with rage and reminded grief. He does not know, he told himself. He cannot know... "Ivan, one of these days somebody is going to pull out a weapon and plug you, and you're going to die in bewilderment, crying, "What did I say? What did I say?" "What did I say?" asked Ivan indignantly. — Lois McMaster Bujold

Real destiny takes everything-the last drop of blood, and strip out your veins to be sure-and gives it back doubled. Quadrupled. A thousand-fold! But you can't give halves. You have to give it all. I know. I swear. I've come back from the dead to speak the truth to you. Real destiny gives you a mountain of life, and puts you on top of it. — Lois McMaster Bujold

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

One step at a time, I can walk around the world. Watch me. — Lois McMaster Bujold

If you want to catch something, running after it isn't always the best way. — Lois McMaster Bujold

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. — Lois McMaster Bujold

Children might or might not be a blessing, but to create them and then fail them was surely damnation. — Lois McMaster Bujold

Growing up, I have discovered over time, is rather like housework: never finished. — Lois McMaster Bujold

It's a bizarre but wonderful feeling, to arrive dead center of a target you didn't even know you were aiming for. — Lois McMaster Bujold

Escapist literature gets a bad rap. But I think escape is important for a lot of people in a lot of places. — Lois McMaster Bujold

How could you be a Great Man if history brought you no Great Events, or brought you to them at the wrong time, too young, too old? — Lois McMaster Bujold

If you desire a man to tell you comfortable lies about your prowess, and so fetter any hope of true excellence, I'm sure you may find one anywhere. Not all prisons are made of iron bars. Some are made of feather beds. — Lois McMaster Bujold

One learns better than to hand one's choices to fear. With age, with every wound and scar, one learns. — Lois McMaster Bujold

A tactical retreat is not a bad response to a surprise assault, you know. First you survive. Then you choose your own ground. Then you counterattack. — Lois McMaster Bujold

Utterly bleak and black is not the sum of realism. All the other colors are real, too. — Lois McMaster Bujold

Forward momentum only worked as a strategy if one had correctly identified which way was forward. — Lois McMaster Bujold

Bleeding ulcers run in my family, we give them to each other. — Lois McMaster Bujold

The gods' most savage curses come upon us as answers to our own prayers. Prayer is a dangerous business. — Lois McMaster Bujold

Since no one is perfect, it follows that all great deeds have been accomplished out of imperfection. Yet they were accomplished, somehow, all the same. — Lois McMaster Bujold

Never do yourself, what you can con professionals into doing for you. — Lois McMaster Bujold

If you make it plain you like people, it's hard for them to resist liking you back. — Lois McMaster Bujold

The Imperial Service could win a war without coffee, but would prefer not to have to. — Lois McMaster Bujold

The rule for finding plots for character-centered novels, which is to ask: 'So what's the worst possible thing I can do to *this* guy?' And then do it. — Lois McMaster Bujold

I am not schizoid. A little manic-depressive, maybe." "'Know thyself.'" "We try, sir. — Lois McMaster Bujold

I have a catch-phrase to describe my plot-generation technique -- 'What's the worst possible thing I can do to these people?' — Lois McMaster Bujold

All the geniuses I ever met were so just part of the time. To qualify, you only have to be great once, you know. Once when it matters. — Lois McMaster Bujold

I am increasingly convinced that technological culture is the entire root of women's liberation. — Lois McMaster Bujold

He's not too short. He's just... concentrated. — Lois McMaster Bujold

A hundred objective measurements didn't sum the worth of a garden; only the delight of its users did that. — Lois McMaster Bujold

Colonel Otto, do you have a, perhaps, fuller and more detailed account than your preliminary one of why my Imperial Security building is now largely an underground installation? From a technical perspective. — Lois McMaster Bujold

I miss it every minute, and I have no wish at all to go back. — Lois McMaster Bujold

If the truth doesn't save us, what does that say about us? — Lois McMaster Bujold

It was never what I wanted to buy that held my heart's hope. It was what I wanted to be. — Lois McMaster Bujold

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. — Lois McMaster Bujold

Power is better than revenge. Power is a live thing, by which you reach out to grasp the future. Revenge is a dead thing, reaching out from the past to grasp you. — Lois McMaster Bujold

We should have taken our chances back then, when we were young and beautiful and didn't even know it. — Lois McMaster Bujold

Hi, I'm a hero, but I can't tell you why. It's classified. — Lois McMaster Bujold

This is important! But you have to stay absolutely cool. I may be completely off-base, and panicking prematurely." "I don't think so. I think you're panicking post-maturely. In fact, if you were panicking any later it would be practically posthumously. I've been panicking for days. — Lois McMaster Bujold

From fried witchetty grubs to gold-plated turnips, when you're a writer you never know what's going to appear on your plate next. It keeps a woman alert, it does. — Lois McMaster Bujold

I am who I choose to be. I have always been what I chose, though not always what I pleased. — Lois McMaster Bujold

Well, what is a blessing but a curse from another point of view? — Lois McMaster Bujold

On the sixth day God saw He couldn't do it all, so He created ENGINEERS — Lois McMaster Bujold

History does not so much repeat as echo, I suppose. — Lois McMaster Bujold

Miles is... Miles; close to a force of nature, climbing up out of his own pages and escaping subordination to any opinion of mine. — Lois McMaster Bujold

All the worry people expend over not existing after they die, yet nary a one ever seems to spare a moment to worry about not having existed before they were conceived. Or at all. After all, one sperm over and we would have been our sisters, and we'd never have been missed. — Lois McMaster Bujold

Events may be horrible or inescapable. Men have always a choice - if not whether, then how, they may endure. — Lois McMaster Bujold

When the souls rise up in glory, yours shall not be shunned nor sunderered, but shall be the prize of the gods' gardens. Even your darkness shall be treasured then, and all your pain made holy. — Lois McMaster Bujold

Cecil flashed a grin. "Quite. Plus your rather irritating habit of treating your superior officers as your, ah..." Cecil paused, apparently groping again for just the right word. "Equals?" Miles hazarded. "Cattle," Cecil corrected judiciously. — Lois McMaster Bujold

It’s important that someone celebrate our existence," she objected amiably. "People are the only mirror we have to see ourselves in. The domain of all meaning. All virtue, all evil, are contained only in people. There is none in the universe at large. Solitary confinement is a punishment in every human culture. — Lois McMaster Bujold

Oh, was that liquor of yours a stimulant?" asked Elena. "I wondered why he didn't fall asleep." "Couldn't you tell?" chuckled Mayhew. "Not really." Miles twisted his head to take in Elena's upside-down worried face, and smile in weak reassurance. Sparkly black and purple whirlpools clouded his vision. Mayhew's laughter faded. "My God," he said hollowly, "you mean he's like that all the time? — Lois McMaster Bujold

A weapon is a device for making your enemy change his mind. — Lois McMaster Bujold

What you are is a question only you can answer. — Lois McMaster Bujold

I'm not getting it all sorted, she worried. I'm not getting it right. You are brilliant, the Voice reassured her. It is imperfect. So are all things trapped in time. You are brilliant, nonetheless. 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. Carry on imperfectly, shining Ista. — Lois McMaster Bujold

It is always easier to get forgiveness than permission. — Lois McMaster Bujold

Miles clutched Quinn's elbow. "Don't Panic." "I'm not panicking," Quinn observed, "I'm watching you panic. It's more entertaining . — Lois McMaster Bujold

This wasn't prayer anyway, it was just argument with the gods. 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. — Lois McMaster Bujold

There is a sad disconnectedness that overcomes a library when its owner is gone. — Lois McMaster Bujold

A true Vor, Miles told himself severely, does not bury his face in his liegewoman's breasts and cry--even if he is at a convenient height for it. — Lois McMaster Bujold

All true wealth is biological. — Lois McMaster Bujold

A price is something you get. A cost is something you lose. — Lois McMaster Bujold

Wikipedia is so dangerous. You go online to look up the definition of eclampsia, and three hours later you find yourself reading this earnest explanation of tentacle porn in [Japanese] anime. — Lois McMaster Bujold

When you can't do something truly useful, you tend to vent the pent up energy in something useless but available, like snappy dressing. — Lois McMaster Bujold

There was no limit to what one man might do, if he gave all, and held back nothing. — Lois McMaster Bujold

I think 99 percent of women's lib comes from technology making different kinds of lives possible, and then the social adjustment follows the technology - it doesn't precede it. — Lois McMaster Bujold

But have you ever overheard two women discussing men? Men are crude liars, comparing their drabs, but women - I'd rather have [an] anatomist dissect me alive than to listen to the things the ladies say about us when they think they are alone. — Lois McMaster Bujold

Life Lessons by Lois McMaster Bujold

1. Lois McMaster Bujold teaches us to be resilient in the face of adversity and to never give up on ourselves. She emphasizes the importance of self-confidence and the power of believing in ourselves.
2. Through her work, Bujold encourages us to be brave and take risks, to never be afraid of failure, and to always strive for success. She also reminds us to be humble and to never forget the importance of kindness and compassion.
3. Bujold's stories demonstrate the power of friendship, loyalty, and the strength of the human spirit. She encourages us to be open to new experiences and to never forget the importance of having a positive outlook on life.