Quotes from work
Vorkosigan Saga

Lois McMaster Bujold

The Vorkosigan Saga is a series of science fiction novels and short stories set in a common fictional universe by American author Lois McMaster Bujold. The first of these was published in 1986 and the most recent in May 2018. Works in the series have received numerous awards and nominations, including five Hugo award wins including one for Best Series.

Lois McMaster Bujold photo

“I’m sure we’d all rather be clever than brave.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Source: Vorkosigan Saga, Shards of Honor (1986), Chapter 6 (p. 90)

Lois McMaster Bujold photo

“Do you know, I think you’d like politics at least on Barrayar. Maybe because it’s so similar to what we call war, elsewhere.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Source: Vorkosigan Saga, Shards of Honor (1986), Chapter 5 (p. 81)

Lois McMaster Bujold photo

“It’s a moribund body anyway, afflicted with the narrowest conservatism and stuffed with old relics only concerned with protecting their privileges. I’m not sure anything can be done with the Counts in the long run. Perhaps they should finally be allowed to dodder over the brink of extinction.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Source: Vorkosigan Saga, Shards of Honor (1986), Chapter 5 (p. 81)

Lois McMaster Bujold photo

“Anybody ever tell you you’re a lunatic?”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

“Not in this context.”

Chapter 5 (p. 80; Vorkosigan has just proposed to Cordelia)
Vorkosigan Saga, Shards of Honor (1986)

Lois McMaster Bujold photo

“Captains may come and captains may go, but the administration goes on forever.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Source: Vorkosigan Saga, Shards of Honor (1986), Chapter 5 (p. 74)

Lois McMaster Bujold photo

“I had a teacher who used to reflect back my questions that way. I thought it was the Socratic method, and it impressed me immensely, until I found out he used it whenever he didn’t know the answer.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

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

Lois McMaster Bujold photo

“The old customs are dead, and we keep trying on new ones, like badly fitting clothes.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Source: Vorkosigan Saga, Shards of Honor (1986), Chapter 3 (p. 50)

Lois McMaster Bujold photo

“I suppose my determination to be a soldier stems from that date. I mean the real thing, not the parades and the uniforms and the glamour, but the logistics, the offensive advantage, the speed and surprise—the power. A better-prepared, stronger, tougher, faster, meaner son-of-a-bitch than any who came through that door.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Source: Vorkosigan Saga, Shards of Honor (1986), Chapter 3 (pp. 43-44)

Lois McMaster Bujold photo

“Save me from that! To pour your life into sons for eighteen or twenty years, and then have the government take them away and waste them cleaning up after some failure of politics—no thanks.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Source: Vorkosigan Saga, Shards of Honor (1986), Chapter 3 (p. 41)

Lois McMaster Bujold photo

“Leadership is mostly a power over imagination, and never more so than in combat. The bravest man alone can only be an armed lunatic. The real strength lies in the ability to get others to do your work.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Source: Vorkosigan Saga, Shards of Honor (1986), Chapter 3 (p. 40)

Lois McMaster Bujold photo

“And what is the most important leg of a three-legged stool? The one that is missing, of course.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Source: Vorkosigan Saga, Falling Free (1988), Chapter 14 (p. 276)

Lois McMaster Bujold photo

“Shooting people was such a stupid activity, why should everybody—anybody!—be so impressed? Silver wondered irritably. You would think she had done something truly great, like discover a new treatment for black stem-rot.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Source: Vorkosigan Saga, Falling Free (1988), Chapter 14 (p. 266)

Lois McMaster Bujold photo

“I could bring almost nothing—I scarcely knew what to choose.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

“Think of the vast amounts of money we shall save on shipping charges, then.”

Chapter 14 (p. 256)
Vorkosigan Saga, Falling Free (1988)

Lois McMaster Bujold photo

“Clearly, you could die while waiting for other people to start your life for you.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Source: Vorkosigan Saga, Falling Free (1988), Chapter 14 (p. 254)

Lois McMaster Bujold photo

“We make our own luck. And it’s my responsibility to see it’s good and not bad.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Source: Vorkosigan Saga, Falling Free (1988), Chapter 11 (p. 194)

Lois McMaster Bujold photo

“We’ve run into a problem.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

“But of course. Who ever tracks me down to impart good news?

Chapter 10 (p. 180)
Vorkosigan Saga, Falling Free (1988)

Lois McMaster Bujold photo

“The trouble with you, Ti, lectured Leo kindly, is that you lack teaching experience. If you had, you’d have faith that the most unlikely people can learn the most amazing things.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Source: Vorkosigan Saga, Falling Free (1988), Chapter 9 (pp. 166-167)

Lois McMaster Bujold photo

“The quaddies, he reflected, didn’t seem to have a very clear idea of private property. Probably came from a lifetime spent in a communal space habitat, with its tight ecology. Planets were communal in the same way, really, except that their enormous size put so much slack in their systems, it was disguised.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Source: Vorkosigan Saga, Falling Free (1988), Chapter 9 (p. 166)

Lois McMaster Bujold photo

“This isn’t a class. This is real life.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Source: Vorkosigan Saga, Falling Free (1988), Chapter 8 (p. 152)

Lois McMaster Bujold photo

“Even soldiers in battle have to be brought to a special state of mental excitement to shoot total strangers.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Source: Vorkosigan Saga, Falling Free (1988), Chapter 8 (p. 143)