Lois McMaster Quotes
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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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An honor is not diminished for being shared.
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History does not so much repeat as echo, I suppose.
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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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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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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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You can say a lot in a little time, if you stick to words of one syllable.
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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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As the week wore on, Ivan contemplated the merits of inertia as a problem-solving technique with growing favor
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Second sight is redundant to reason anyway.
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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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The gods' most savage curses come upon us as answers to our own prayers. Prayer is a dangerous business.
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I am increasingly convinced that technological culture is the entire root of women's liberation.
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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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Honor is what you know about yourself.
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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 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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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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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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Read, or you will be missing something extraordinary.
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He's not too short. He's just... concentrated.
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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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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.