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I miss it every minute, and I have no wish at all to go back.
Lois McMaster -
Never argue with a pedant over nomenclature. It wastes your time and annoys the pedant.
Lois McMaster
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A tactical retreat is not a bad response to a surprise assault, you know. First you survive. Then you choose your own ground. Then you counterattack.
Lois McMaster -
Growing up, I have discovered over time, is rather like housework: never finished.
Lois McMaster -
Miles clutched Quinn's elbow. "Don't Panic." "I'm not panicking," Quinn observed, "I'm watching you panic. It's more entertaining .
Lois McMaster -
Colonel Otto, do you have a, perhaps, fuller and more detailed account than your preliminary one of why my Imperial Security building is now largely an underground installation? From a technical perspective.
Lois McMaster -
Endure pain, find joy, and make your own meaning, because the universe certainly isn't going to supply it.
Lois McMaster -
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
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Not that I haven't leaped up into the blinding light of competence now and then. It's sustaining the altitude that defeats me.
Lois McMaster -
Suicidal glory is the luxury of the irresponsible.
Lois McMaster -
Miles exhaled carefully, faint with rage and reminded grief. He does not know, he told himself. He cannot know... "Ivan, one of these days somebody is going to pull out a weapon and plug you, and you're going to die in bewilderment, crying, "What did I say? What did I say?" "What did I say?" asked Ivan indignantly.
Lois McMaster -
Utterly bleak and black is not the sum of realism. All the other colors are real, too.
Lois McMaster -
I am not schizoid. A little manic-depressive, maybe." "'Know thyself.'" "We try, sir.
Lois McMaster -
Children might or might not be a blessing, but to create them and then fail them was surely damnation.
Lois McMaster
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War is not its own end, except in some catastrophic slide into absolute damnation. It's peace that's wanted. Some better peace than the one you started with.
Lois McMaster -
Honor is what you know about yourself.
Lois McMaster -
An honor is not diminished for being shared.
Lois McMaster -
History does not so much repeat as echo, I suppose.
Lois McMaster -
There is no more hollow feeling than to stand with your honor shattered at your feet while soaring public reputation wraps you in rewards. That's soul-destroying. The other way around is merely very, very irritating.
Lois McMaster -
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.
Lois McMaster
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If you make it plain you like people, it's hard for them to resist liking you back.
Lois McMaster -
I have a catch-phrase to describe my plot-generation technique -- 'What's the worst possible thing I can do to these people?'
Lois McMaster -
Wikipedia is so dangerous. You go online to look up the definition of eclampsia, and three hours later you find yourself reading this earnest explanation of tentacle porn in Japanese anime.
Lois McMaster -
It's a bizarre but wonderful feeling, to arrive dead center of a target you didn't even know you were aiming for.
Lois McMaster