Lois McMaster Quotes
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Poets speak of hope in ladies smiles, but give me a smirk any day, I say.
-
A true Vor, Miles told himself severely, does not bury his face in his liegewoman's breasts and cry--even if he is at a convenient height for it.
-
Miles is... Miles; close to a force of nature, climbing up out of his own pages and escaping subordination to any opinion of mine.
-
I began my writing career in a very isolated place and time.
-
Honesty is the only way with anyone, when you'll be so close as to be living inside each other's skins.
-
A hundred objective measurements didn't sum the worth of a garden; only the delight of its users did that.
-
Exile, for no other motive than ease, would be the last defeat, with no seed of future victory in it.
-
I don't confuse greatness with perfection. To be great anyhow is the higher achievement.
-
Some prices are just too high, no matter how much you may want the prize. The one thing you can't trade for your heart's desire is your heart.
-
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.
-
There is a sad disconnectedness that overcomes a library when its owner is gone.
-
I spent my 20s working in patient care at a large university hospital, an experience that has informed all my work and has given me a lot of human observation to draw on.
-
My home is not a place, it is people.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Some men just aren't cut out for paternity. Better they should realize it before and not after they become responsible for a son.
-
I've always tried to write the kind of book I most loved to read: character-centered adventure.