When you choose an action, you choose the consequences of that action. When you desire a consequence you had damned well better take the action that would create it. Lois McMaster Bujold More Quotes by Lois McMaster Bujold More Quotes From Lois McMaster Bujold Some people grow into their dreams, instead of out of them. Lois McMaster Bujold grows dream people My dinner party,' Miles grated. 'It's just breaking up.' And sinking. All souls feared lost. Lois McMaster Bujold dinner party soul There are always survivors at a massacre. Among the victors, if nowhere else. Lois McMaster Bujold massacres victory survivor 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 usual inspiration writing If you ever have to make a choice between learning and inspiration, choose learning. It works most of the time. Lois McMaster Bujold choices inspiration ifs One foot in front of the other, wasn't that the grownup way of solving problems? Surely he ought to be a grownup at his age. Lois McMaster Bujold age feet way Forward momentum only worked as a strategy if one had correctly identified which way was forward. Lois McMaster Bujold strategy momentum way The world is made by the people who show up for the job. Lois McMaster Bujold jobs people world 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 important would-be thinking "It was suicide, wasn't it?" "In an involuntary sort of way," said Vorob'yev. "These Cetagandan political suicides can get awfully messy, when the principal won't cooperate." "Thirty-two stab wounds in the back, worst case of suicide they ever saw?" murmured Ivan, clearly fascinated by the gossip. "Exactly, my lord." Lois McMaster Bujold gossip suicide two If you can't do what you want, do what you can. Lois McMaster Bujold invisible-monsters action want People give themselves to you, in their talking, and in other ways, if you are quiet and patient and let them, and not in such a damned rush to give yourself to them you go bat-blind and deaf. Lois McMaster Bujold talking giving people Suicidal glory is the luxury of the irresponsible. Lois McMaster Bujold suicidal luxury glory Do it for yourself. The universe will be around to collect its cut later. Lois McMaster Bujold do-it-yourself universe cutting There was no limit to what one man might do, if he gave all, and held back nothing. Lois McMaster Bujold limits might men Poets speak of hope in ladies smiles, but give me a smirk any day, I say. Lois McMaster Bujold smirk speak giving 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 eye sorry feelings I know girls who pine for it. They like to play dress-up and pretend being Vor ladies of old, rescued from menace by romantic Vor youths. For some reason they never play 'dying in childbirth', or 'vomiting your guts out from the red dysentery', or 'weaving till you go blind and crippled from arthritis and dye poisoning', or 'infanticide'. Well, they do die romantically of disease sometimes, but somehow it's always an illness that makes you interestingly pale and everyone sorry and doesn't involve losing bowel control. Lois McMaster Bujold girl sorry play 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 kindness heart men You don't pay back your parents. You can't. The debt you owe them gets collected by your children, who hand it down in turn. It's a sort of entailment. Or if you don't have children of the body, it's left as a debt to your common humanity. Or to your God, if you possess or are possessed by one. The family economy evades calculation in the gross planetary product. It's the only deal I know where, when you give more than you get, you aren't bankrupted - but rather, vastly enriched. Lois McMaster Bujold common-humanity children hands
