Lois McMaster Bujold: Trending quotes

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“No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy. Not when the enemy is me.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

This includes a common paraphrase of a statement which originates with military strategist Field Marshall Helmuth von Moltke: "No plan of operations extends with any certainty beyond the first contact with the main hostile force."
Vorkosigan Saga, Cetaganda (1996)

“The joys of command — well, you know. You taught them to me. One part glory to ten parts shoveling manure.”

Lois McMaster Bujold

Source: World of the Five Gods series, The Curse of Chalion (2000), p. 76

“Not all books are created equal, and for the special ones, you begin to know it sometimes even before the work is finished, but always by the time you slam that last line home and shriek, "Done! Done!," and fall head-down across your keyboard like the runner from Marathon.”

Lois McMaster Bujold

"'A Conversation With Lois McMaster Bujold", p. 54
The Vorkosigan Companion (2008)

“There is a subtle difference between being a prisoner and being a slave. I don't mistake either for being free.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Vorkosigan Saga, Borders of Infinity (1989)

“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

Geek Speak Magazine Interview (2010)

“Second sight is redundant to reason anyway.”

Lois McMaster Bujold

Source: World of the Five Gods series, The Curse of Chalion (2000), p. 328

“East is west, up is down, and being falsely arrested for getting your C. O.'s throat cut is a simplification. I must be on Barrayar.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Source: Vorkosigan Saga, Shards of Honor (1986), Chapter 8 (p. 128)

“If we shouldn't do it, we shouldn't be able to do it.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Vorkosigan Saga, The Vor Game (1990)

“Surely only correct understanding could lead to correct action.”

Lois McMaster Bujold

Source: World of the Five Gods series, The Curse of Chalion (2000), p. 369

“The entire center of her life was a blackened waste, its long years not to be recovered nor replaced.”

Lois McMaster Bujold

Source: World of the Five Gods series, Paladin of Souls (2003), p. 125

“Seems to me the only difference between your friends and your enemies is how long they stand around chatting before they shoot you.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

“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.”

Chapter 4 (p. 60)
Vorkosigan Saga, Shards of Honor (1986)

“And what goes on in the head of a walking dead man? What personal failure could he possibly fear more than death itself?”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Vorkosigan Saga, Brothers in Arms (1989)

“You can't give power away and keep it simultaneously. Except posthumously.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Vorkosigan Saga, Cetaganda (1996)

“If you ever have to make a choice between learning and inspiration, choose learning. It works more of the time.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Source: Vorkosigan Saga, Falling Free (1988), Chapter 14 (pp. 273-274)

“Rule 1: Only overrule the tactical computer if you know something it doesn't. Rule 2: The tac comp always knows more than you do.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Vorkosigan Saga, The Vor Game (1990)

“The best strategies run on rails. Live or die, you make your goal.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Vorkosigan Saga, Cetaganda (1996)

“Never… ever suggest they don't have to pay you. What they pay for, they'll value. What they get for free, they'll take for granted, and then demand as a right. Hold them up for all the market will bear.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Vorkosigan Saga, A Civil Campaign (1999)

“How can I give you up? You're the mountains and the lake, the memories — you have them all. When you're with me, I'm at home, wherever I am.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Vorkosigan Saga, The Warrior's Apprentice (1986)

“Three cheers for literacy… I feel sick.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Vorkosigan Saga, Brothers in Arms (1989)

“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

Geek Speak Magazine Interview (2010)