Lois McMaster Quotes
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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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Mia Maz glanced aside in concern at his muffled snort. "Are you all right?" "Yes. Sorry," he whispered. "I'm just having an attack of limericks." Her eyes widened, and she bit her lip; only her deepening dimple betrayed her. "Shhh," she said, with feeling.
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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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There are always survivors at a massacre. Among the victors, if nowhere else.
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All the worry people expend over not existing after they die, yet nary a one ever seems to spare a moment to worry about not having existed before they were conceived. Or at all. After all, one sperm over and we would have been our sisters, and we'd never have been missed.
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I am an atheist, myself. A simple faith, but a great comfort to me, in these last days.
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One corner of his mouth crooked up, then the quirk vanished in a thoughtful pursing of his lips. "He's bisexual, you know." He took a delicate sip of his wine. "Was bisexual," she corrected absently, looking fondly across the room. "Now he's monogamous." Vordarian choked, sputtering.
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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've always tried to write the kind of book I most loved to read: character-centered adventure.
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There is a sad disconnectedness that overcomes a library when its owner is gone.
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Events may be horrible or inescapable. Men have always a choice - if not whether, then how, they may endure.
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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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I don't confuse greatness with perfection. To be great anyhow is the higher achievement.
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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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Honesty is the only way with anyone, when you'll be so close as to be living inside each other's skins.
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Like integrity, love of life was not a subject to be studied, it was a contagion to be caught. And you had to catch it from someone who had it.
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The principle difference between heaven and hell is the company you keep there.
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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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I am increasingly convinced that technological culture is the entire root of women's liberation.
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Miles is... Miles; close to a force of nature, climbing up out of his own pages and escaping subordination to any opinion of mine.
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I take it as a man's duty to restrain himself.
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When the souls rise up in glory, yours shall not be shunned nor sunderered, but shall be the prize of the gods' gardens. Even your darkness shall be treasured then, and all your pain made holy.
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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.