Lois McMaster Quotes
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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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Children might or might not be a blessing, but to create them and then fail them was surely damnation.
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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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An honor is not diminished for being shared.
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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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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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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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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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You can say a lot in a little time, if you stick to words of one syllable.
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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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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 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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Honor is what you know about yourself.
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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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As the week wore on, Ivan contemplated the merits of inertia as a problem-solving technique with growing favor
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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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I began my writing career in a very isolated place and time.
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Poets speak of hope in ladies smiles, but give me a smirk any day, I say.
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I am increasingly convinced that technological culture is the entire root of women's liberation.
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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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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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Read, or you will be missing something extraordinary.