Lois McMaster Bujold

"Ordinary men and women…die every day. For all sorts of reasons, from random chance to inexorable time. Death is not an Imperial monopoly."

"“You go on. You just go on. There’s nothing more to it, and there’s no trick to make it easier. You just go on.” “What do you find on the other side? When you go on?” She shrugged. “Your life again. What else?” “Is that a promise?” She picked up a pebble, fingered it, and tossed it into the water. The moon-lines bloomed and danced. “It’s an inevitability. No trick. No choice. You just go on.”"

"General. Prudence is one thing. Paranoia that can’t tell friend from foe is quite another."

"The trouble with synopsized information was that it was always so nebulous. The devil was in the details, the raw data; embedded therein were all the tiny clues that fed the intuition demon until it became strong and fat and, sometimes, grew up to become an actual Theory, or even a Proof."

"Suicide wasn’t an option for me anymore, I found. Not like good old adolescent angst. I’m no longer of the secret opinion that death will somehow overlook me if I don’t do something personally about it. And give life…it seems stupid not to make the most of what I do have. Not to mention deucedly ungrateful."

"Never argue with a pedant over nomenclature. It wastes your time and annoys the pedant."

"Their excitement was dampened by a genuine concern for their daughter’s safety and personal happiness, though they are certainly as puzzled how this is to be achieved as any other set of parents."

"I despise internal investigations. Even if you win, you lose."

"“What are you doing?” the Countess asked.… “Just…wrestling with temptation.” Illyan’s voice came back, amused. “Who’s winning?” Miles’s eye followed the cracks in the plaster, overhead. His voice came out high and light, on a sigh: “I think…I’m going for the best two falls out of three.”"

"His mother had often said, When you choose an action, you choose the consequences of that action. She had emphasized the corollary of this axiom even more vehemently: when you desired a consequence you had damned well better take the action that would create it."

"I elect to be…myself."

"If we get straight truth in, maybe we’ve got half a chance of getting good judgment out. No damn chance otherwise, that’s for sure."

"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."

"I was never a mercenary, not ever. Not for one single minute."

"But I am not my father. I don’t have to repeat his mistakes; I can invent bright-new ones."

"“You think he’s a genius?” she said, raising her eyebrows. The high Vor twit?” “I don’t know him quite well enough, yet. But I suspect so, a part of the time.” “Can you be a genius part of the time?” “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.”"

"People complaining about their spouses always looked and sounded so ugly."

"Power corrupts, but we want energy."

"“We’ll never know the whole truth, I suppose,” said Venier. Was that supposed to be a concession? “You can be told the whole truth all day long, but if you won’t believe it, then no, I don’t suppose you ever will never know it.”"

"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."

"To this day she didn’t know if he taken her disgusted refusal to defend herself for a covert admission of guilt."

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

"How could you tell the difference between not liking sex, and not liking the only person you’d ever done sex with? Yet she was almost desperate for touch, mere affection untainted by the indignities of the erotic."

"Cynicism did not seem nearly so impressively daring to her now as it had when she was twenty."

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

"“Does it seem strange…does it give you a very different view of your parents, to see them on vid?” “No,” he said. “It gives me a very different view of holovids.”"

"“They seem more like toys than jewels, but I have to admit, they’re striking.” “Oh, yes, a typical tech toy. High-end this year, everywhere next year, nowhere after that, till the antiquarians’ revival.”"

"The laws of physics took precedence over heroic intent for the next couple of seconds."

"Once you had delegated the best people to do a job for you, you had to trust both them and your judgment."

"I am not here to vent my feelings. I am here to achieve my goals."

"At the moment I have very little evidence and lots of theories. I’m itching to reverse the proportions."

"“It’s a brute-force approach,” Miles said apologetically. “And not, alas, quite as simple as a data match.” “That,” murmured Gibbs, “is why enlisted men were invented.”"

"Real expertise, the kind that means you can’t be intimidated or, or…persuaded to go along with something stupid because you think everyone in the universe knows more than you do."

"Aim high. You may still miss the target but at least you won’t shoot your foot off."

"What an obituary. When I go down into the ground at last, as God is my judge, I pray my best-beloved may have better to say of me than, “He didn’t hit me.”"

"Oh hell. Have you fallen in love with this woman, idiot boy? Um. Yeah. He’d been falling for days, he realized in retrospect. It was just that he’d finally hit the ground."

"Just like swatting flies with a laser cannon. The aim’s a bit tricky, but it sure takes care of the flies."

"Forward momentum only worked as a strategy if one had correctly identified which was was forward."

"To get the right answer, one must first correctly frame the question."

"We have advanced to new and surprising levels of bafflement."

"She probably felt about matrimony the way Miles felt about needle-grenade launchers."

"Knowledge might not be power, but ignorance was definitely weakness, and so was poverty."

"One’s career might depend solely on one’s own efforts, but marriage was a lottery, and you drew your lot in late adolescence or early adulthood at a point of maximum idiocy and confusion. Perhaps it was just as well. If people were too sensible, the human race might well come to an end. Evolution favored the maximum production of children, not of happiness."

"He consoled himself with the reflection that it was seldom he found himself in company who made him feel this stupid. It was probably good for his soul."

"“Have you determined if it is meant to be a weapon at all?” she said. “We’ve got some very dead people to account for,” Miles pointed out. “That, alas, does not necessarily require a weapon.” Professor Vorthys said. “Carelessness, stupidity, haste, and ignorance are quite as powerfully destructive forces as homicidal intent.”"

"People have some very odd illusions about power. Mostly it consists of finding a parade and nipping over to place yourself at the head of the band. Just as eloquence consists of persuading people of things they desperately want to believe. Demagoguery, I suppose, is eloquence sliding to some least moral energy level."

"If you could go back in time and change things… The only moment in time you could change things was the elusive now, which slipped through your fingers as fast as you could think about it."

"The hostage game is a bad game, a sad and ugly game that’s a lot easier to start than end. The worst versions I’ve seen ended up with neither side in control, or getting anything they wanted. And the people who stand to lose the most in it frequently aren’t even playing."

"He's not even a mad scientist. He's merely a very upset engineer."

"“I’m planning my course work for the next session at university. I was too late to start this summer, so I’ll begin in the fall. There’s so much to choose from. I feel so ignorant.” “Educated is what you aim to be coming out, not going in.”"