Lois McMaster Bujold: Doing

“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. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“Never do yourself, what you can con professionals into doing for you.”

“The dead cannot cry out for justice; it is a duty of the living to do so for them.”

“On the sixth day God saw He couldn't do it all, so He created ENGINEERS”

“I have a catchphrase to describe my plot-generation technique — "What's the worst possible thing I can do to these people?"”

“If you can't do what you want, do what you can.”

“I don't know. I do think, half of what we call madness is just some poor slob dealing with pain by a strategy that annoys the people around him.”

“Experience suggests it doesn't matter so much how you got here, as what you do after you arrive.”

“Do it for yourself. The universe will be around to collect its cut later.”

“Hunting hawks do not belong in cages, no matter how much a man covets their grace, no matter how golden the bars. They are far more beautiful soaring free. Heartbreakingly beautiful.”

“Am I reading too much into all that innuendo, or did you in fact just connive to assassinate Gregor in one breath, offer to cuckold him in the next, accuse your father of homosexuality, suggest a patricidal plot against him, and league yourself with Cavilo -- what are you going to do for an encore?”

“Any community's 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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“Taura nailed it. She'll do for m'lord, all right. And God help their enemies.”

“It didn't work, so let's do it some more'? In my line of work, they call that military stupidity. I don't know what they call it in civilian life.”

“"Do you know what this is, Lord Vorkosigan?" Giaja asked.
Miles eyed the medallion of the Order of Merit on its colored ribbon, glittering on a bed of velvet. "Yes, sir. It is a lead weight, suitable for sinking small enemies. Are you going to sew me into a silk sack with it, before you throw me overboard?"”

“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.”