Lois McMaster Quotes
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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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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 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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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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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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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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Miles added it to his life's lessons list. Call it Rule 27B. Never make key tactical decisions while having electro-convulsive seizures.
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Honor is what you know about yourself.
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A true Vor, Miles told himself severely, does not bury his face in his liegewoman's breasts and cry--even if he is at a convenient height for it.
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I don't confuse greatness with perfection. To be great anyhow is the higher achievement.
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The rule for finding plots for character-centered novels, which is to ask: 'So what's the worst possible thing I can do to *this* guy?' And then do it.
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History does not so much repeat as echo, I suppose.
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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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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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The will to be stupid is a very powerful force, but there are always alternatives.
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Read, or you will be missing something extraordinary.
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Never do yourself, what you can con professionals into doing for you.
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Exile, for no other motive than ease, would be the last defeat, with no seed of future victory in it.
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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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When you choose an action, you choose the consequences of that action. When you desire a consequence you had damned well better take the action that would create it.
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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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A hundred objective measurements didn't sum the worth of a garden; only the delight of its users did that.
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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.