Lois McMaster Quotes
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I miss it every minute, and I have no wish at all to go back.
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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.
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Good soldiers never pass up a chance to eat or sleep. They never know how much they'll be called on to do before the next chance.
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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.
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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.
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Growing up, I have discovered over time, is rather like housework: never finished.
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Never argue with a pedant over nomenclature. It wastes your time and annoys the pedant.
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Miles clutched Quinn's elbow. "Don't Panic." "I'm not panicking," Quinn observed, "I'm watching you panic. It's more entertaining .
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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.
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A stunning first impression was not the same thing as love at first sight. But surely it was an invitation to consider the matter.
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Utterly bleak and black is not the sum of realism. All the other colors are real, too.
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I am not schizoid. A little manic-depressive, maybe." "'Know thyself.'" "We try, sir.
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Endure pain, find joy, and make your own meaning, because the universe certainly isn't going to supply it.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Children might or might not be a blessing, but to create them and then fail them was surely damnation.
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I think 99 percent of women's lib comes from technology making different kinds of lives possible, and then the social adjustment follows the technology - it doesn't precede it.
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Suicidal glory is the luxury of the irresponsible.
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From fried witchetty grubs to gold-plated turnips, when you're a writer you never know what's going to appear on your plate next. It keeps a woman alert, it does.
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If you make it plain you like people, it's hard for them to resist liking you back.
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An honor is not diminished for being shared.
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I have a catch-phrase to describe my plot-generation technique -- 'What's the worst possible thing I can do to these people?'