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Lois McMaster Bujold

628 quotes

“I thought you already knew everything.” “Knowledge is not the same thing as understanding. I have a profound need to understand. Everything.”
Lois McMaster Bujold (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The man was embezzling demons?”
Lois McMaster Bujold (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“His further study of humanity had revealed just how much people could convince themselves that their own needs were those of the gods, and not the other way around.”
Lois McMaster Bujold (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I did not say that well, Pen fretted. No, said Des thoughtfully as they turned away, but you said it true. Which is better, and more rare.”
Lois McMaster Bujold (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A quagmire of delay,” Lady Xarre observed, “has trapped efforts at righting wrongs before.”
Lois McMaster Bujold (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“No tactical plan should hinge on one’s enemy making the right mistake.”
Lois McMaster Bujold (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Really, murmured Des, Tronio is like a chicken that brought its own pot and onions.”
Lois McMaster Bujold (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Tolga guided him not to the morgue, but to a patient chamber alloted mostly to a dozen crippled old indigent men, some brought in to be healed, some to die. For a beggar, Pen was not entirely sure it was a better death than in an alley or under a bridge; death was never a comfortable process, despite cots and sheets and usually overworked attendants, and it took longer here.”
Lois McMaster Bujold (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“She used to ask, 'Why did the gods give [my son] to me if they were only going to take him away?' Learned Retaka never had an answer. "No," said Pen slowly, "that's backward. The gods do not give us our children. We give our children to the gods.”
Lois McMaster Bujold (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We see the world not as it is, but as we are. ~ Dag Redwing Hickory Bluefield”
Lois McMaster Bujold (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Her eyes were full of new; it made them brighter.”
Lois McMaster Bujold (born 1949) first seen 1972 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Loc 1972 of 2974
“Words won't break bones seemed like the lying-est lie Barr had ever been told, as a child. Bones knit eventually, he knew from close personal experience. The scars of slander, an insult not just delivered but believed, might never heal in a lifetime.”
Lois McMaster Bujold (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Thing is... she may get mad, but she isn't whiny or naggy about it. She doesn't store it up like a, a compost heap, all hot on the inside and rotting. She's angry like she has a right, and no one disputes it." She added after a moment, "Or tells her to be a good girl, or be quiet, or apologize. Or go to her room" ~ Lily Mason, on why she admires Captain Amma”
Lois McMaster Bujold (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I don't take information and experience into my mind in that organized a fashion, but when I want to bring it out, somehow it's there. You write what you know because — like there's another choice? The trick is to try and know as much as possible.”
Lois McMaster Bujold (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Don't worry about that depressing old dictum "Write what you know". If you need to know something, look it up. Learn how to find out what you need to know to make it right. Be passionate, be picky, have enough self-criticism to demand of yourself your best and not sort of let it slide by. And remember that the greatest defect any piece of fiction can have is not to be finished.”
Lois McMaster Bujold (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Some fortunate, prolific writers seem to be able, efficiently, to keep several projects going at once; it appears I am not one of them.”
Lois McMaster Bujold (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I don’t write stories to tell readers what to think, or even tell them what I think; I write stories to show me what I think. Writing is always a journey of discovery that way, as suspenseful for me as I hope it will be for the audience.”
Lois McMaster Bujold (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Lots of us SF-types like the idea of traveling to the Future (although, having now done so once myself -- the hard way -- I’m less sure), but why do we imagine the Future would want us? Oh, a few 21st-century Icemen, perhaps, as historical curiosities, but in our hundreds of millions? It would be like the greatest wave of immigration ever, but from the past into other people’s Now. It might seem to them like sacrificing resources needed for their children to their great-great-great-grandparents. Counter-evolutionary, among other things.”
Lois McMaster Bujold (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The writer should always reserve the right to have a better idea.”
Lois McMaster Bujold (born 1949) first seen 1999 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Posted to the Dendarii.com Lois McMaster Bujold Plot FAQ as an official statement from Bujold, no later than 1999: The Author always reserves the right to have a better idea.
“It's an interesting problem, though, for writers of popular series. Should one throw one's protagonist over the Reichenbach Falls, or let him fade gently into the sunset of the Sussex Downs, keeping bees? (Or both?) No matter which the writer chooses, someone will be unhappy about it. If one's audience is large enough, it will collectively demand every possible closure, most mutually exclusive.”
Lois McMaster Bujold (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All great human deeds both consume and transform their doers. Consider an athlete, or a scientist, or an artist, or an independent business creator. In the service of their goals they lay down time and energy and many other choices and pleasures; in return, they become most truly themselves. A false destiny may be spotted by the fact that it consumes without transforming, without giving back the enlarged self. Becoming a parent is one of these basic human transformational deeds. By this act, we change our fundamental relationship with the universe — if nothing else, we lose our place as the pinnacle and end-point of evolution, and become a mere link. The demands of motherhood especially consume the old self, and replace it with something new, often better and wiser, sometimes wearier or disillusioned, or tense and terrified, certainly more self-knowing, but never the same again.”
Lois McMaster Bujold (born 1949) first seen 1996 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Cordelia's Honor (1996), "Author's Afterword
“Welcome to Barrayar, son. Here you go: have a world of wealth and poverty, wrenching change and rooted history. Have a birth; have two. Have a name. Miles means “soldier,“ but don’t let the power of suggestion overwhelm you. Have a twisted form in a society that loathes and fears the mutations that have been its deepest agony. Have a title, wealth, power, and all the hatred and envy they will draw. Have your body ripped apart and re-arranged. Inherit an array of friends and enemies you never made. Have a grandfather from hell. Endure pain, find joy, and make your own meaning, because the universe certainly isn’t going to supply it. Always be a moving target. Live. Live. Live.”
Lois McMaster Bujold (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All great human deeds both consume and transform their doers. Consider an athlete, or a scientist, or an artist, or an independent business creator. In service of their goals they lay down time and energy and many other choices and pleasures; in return, they become most truly themselves. A false destiny may be spotted by the fact that it consumes without transforming, without giving back the enlarged self. Becoming a parent is one of these basic human transformational deeds. By this act, we change our fundamental relationship with the universe—if nothing else, we lose our place as the pinnacle and end-point of evolution, and become a mere link. The demands of motherhood especially consume the old self, and replace it with something new, often better and wiser, sometimes wearier or disillusioned, or tense and terrified, certainly more self-knowing, but never the same again.”
Lois McMaster Bujold (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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. She began then to believe he was living in a different universe, one with a different set of physical laws, perhaps, and an alternate history. And very different people from the ones she met of the same name. Smarmy doppelgangers all.”
Lois McMaster Bujold (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There’s something to that in both directions,” said Ekaterin mildly. “Nothing is more guaranteed to make one start acting like a child than to be treated like one. It’s so infuriating. It took me the longest time to figure out how to stop falling into that trap.” “Yes, exactly,” said Kareen eagerly. “You understand! So—how did you make them stop?” “You can’t make them—whoever your particular them is—do anything, really,” said Ekaterin slowly. “Adulthood isn’t an award they’ll give you for being a good child. You can waste…years, trying to get someone to give that respect to you, as though it were a sort of promotion or raise in pay. If only you do enough, if only you are good enough. No. You have to just…take it. Give it to yourself, I suppose. Say, I’m sorry you feel like that, and walk away. But that’s hard.”
Lois McMaster Bujold (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“So…d’you like him? Or not?” Like was surely not an adequate word for this hash of delight and anger and longing, this profound respect laced with profound irritation, all floating on a dark pool of old pain. The past and the future, at war in her head. “I don’t know. Some of the time I do, yes, very much.” Another long pause. “Are you in love with him?” What Nikki knew of adult love, he’d mostly garnered off the holovid. Part of her mind readily translated this question as code for, Which way are you going to jump, and what will happen to me? And yet…he could not share or even imagine the complexity of her romantic hopes and fears, but he certainly knew how such stories were supposed to Come Out Right. “I don’t know. Some of the time. I think.” He favored her with his Big People Are Crazy look. In all, she could only agree.”
Lois McMaster Bujold (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Over and over in his career, Pen had confronted the insight that the gods did not care for humans' material concerns, much to the humans' dismay. Only with what record of them was carved into their souls by their unique and individual lives, presented as the final offering upon the alter of their deaths. All deaths, in whatever form. One by one, each attended to with the same singular consideration. Each valuated with the discernment of a connoisseur adding to his collection. Each placed in the niche found most fitting to it. Denied by self-will sometimes, by the gods' will at others, but never lost by carelessness.”
Lois McMaster Bujold (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I am a much better person and a better writer having had my children than I would be otherwise. I would have missed a whole aspect of the human experience that's tremendously fundamental to things like characterization. A lot of writers write as if the hero sort of popped out of the box at age 22 fully formed. And one thing that raising children does is give you some sense of how human beings really are put together. So when you go to put together a character you can have a more realistic sense of where people really come from, why they really behave the way they do and what a tremendous amount of life and complexity lies behind every human being. But I think you can get that from being a father too. I think it's something you can do by growing up and being observant even if you don't have children.”
Lois McMaster Bujold (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source