Lois McMaster Quotes
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The will to be stupid is a very powerful force, but there are always alternatives.
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It's an ancient and honorable term for the final step in any engineering project. Turn it on, see if it smokes.
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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.
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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?'
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An honor is not diminished for being shared.
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Oh, was that liquor of yours a stimulant?" asked Elena. "I wondered why he didn't fall asleep." "Couldn't you tell?" chuckled Mayhew. "Not really." Miles twisted his head to take in Elena's upside-down worried face, and smile in weak reassurance. Sparkly black and purple whirlpools clouded his vision. Mayhew's laughter faded. "My God," he said hollowly, "you mean he's like that all the time?
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One learns better than to hand one's choices to fear. With age, with every wound and scar, one learns.
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I am increasingly convinced that technological culture is the entire root of women's liberation.
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As the week wore on, Ivan contemplated the merits of inertia as a problem-solving technique with growing favor
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Honor is what you know about yourself.
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Read, or you will be missing something extraordinary.
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It's a bizarre but wonderful feeling, to arrive dead center of a target you didn't even know you were aiming for.
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History does not so much repeat as echo, I suppose.
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You can say a lot in a little time, if you stick to words of one syllable.
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I don’t duel, boy. I kill as a soldier kills, which is as a butcher kills, as quickly, efficiently, and with as least risk to myself as I can arrange.
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Whether you function as welders or inspectors, the laws of physics are implacable lie-detectors. You may fool men. You will never fool the metal.
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Escapist literature gets a bad rap. But I think escape is important for a lot of people in a lot of places.
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"It was suicide, wasn't it?" "In an involuntary sort of way," said Vorob'yev. "These Cetagandan political suicides can get awfully messy, when the principal won't cooperate." "Thirty-two stab wounds in the back, worst case of suicide they ever saw?" murmured Ivan, clearly fascinated by the gossip. "Exactly, my lord."
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But have you ever overheard two women discussing men? Men are crude liars, comparing their drabs, but women - I'd rather have an anatomist dissect me alive than to listen to the things the ladies say about us when they think they are alone.
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Any man can be kind when he is comfortable. I'd always thought kindness a trivial virtue, therefore. But when we were hungry, thirsty, sick, frightened, with our deaths shouting at us, in the heart of horror, you were still as unfailingly courteous as a gentleman at ease before his own hearth.
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The real unforgivable acts are committed by calm men in beautiful green silk rooms, who deal death wholesale, by the shipload, without lust, without anger, or desire, or any redeeming emotion to excuse them but cold fear of some pretended future. But the crimes they hope to prevent in that future are imaginary. The ones they commit in the present - they are real.
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Second sight is redundant to reason anyway.
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Never do yourself, what you can con professionals into doing for you.
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He's not too short. He's just... concentrated.