Lois McMaster Quotes
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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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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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I'm very interested in the impact of biotechnology on the way people live.
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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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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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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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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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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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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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Never do yourself, what you can con professionals into doing for you.
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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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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 increasingly convinced that technological culture is the entire root of women's liberation.
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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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I am an atheist, myself. A simple faith, but a great comfort to me, in these last days.
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There is a sad disconnectedness that overcomes a library when its owner is gone.
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The principle difference between heaven and hell is the company you keep there.
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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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He's not too short. He's just... concentrated.
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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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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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I'm sorry. I can love you. I can grieve for you, or with you. I can share your pain. But I cannot judge you.
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Ignorance is not stupidity, but it might as well be. And I do not like feeling stupid.
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I don't confuse greatness with perfection. To be great anyhow is the higher achievement.