Lois McMaster Quotes
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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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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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A hundred objective measurements didn't sum the worth of a garden; only the delight of its users did that.
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Poets speak of hope in ladies smiles, but give me a smirk any day, I say.
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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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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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"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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Second sight is redundant to reason anyway.
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I began my writing career in a very isolated place and time.
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This wasn't prayer anyway, it was just argument with the gods. Prayer, he suspected as he hoisted himself up and turned for the door, was putting one foot in front of the other. Moving all the same.
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He's not too short. He's just... concentrated.
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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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The gods' most savage curses come upon us as answers to our own prayers. Prayer is a dangerous business.
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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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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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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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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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When I go down into the ground at last, as God is my judge, I pray my best-beloved may have better to say of me than, "He didn't hit me."
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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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My home is not a place, it is people.
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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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A price is something you get. A cost is something you lose.
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Don't wish to be normal. Wish to be yourself. To the hilt. Find out what you're best at, and develop it, and hopscotch your weaknesses. Wish to be great at whatever you are.
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They stared at her curiously, and she caught snatches of conversation in two or three languages. It wasn't hard to guess their content, and she smiled a bit primly. Youth, it appeared, was full of illusions as to how much sexual energy two people might have to spare while hiking forty or so kilometers a day, concussed, stunned, diseased, on poor food and little sleep, alternating caring for a wounded man with avoiding becoming dinner for every carnivore within range - and with a coup to plan for the end.