Lois McMaster Quotes
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Read, or you will be missing something extraordinary.
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I began my writing career in a very isolated place and time.
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Never do yourself, what you can con professionals into doing for you.
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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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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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Exile, for no other motive than ease, would be the last defeat, with no seed of future victory in it.
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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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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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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.
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I don't confuse greatness with perfection. To be great anyhow is the higher achievement.
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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.
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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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Events may be horrible or inescapable. Men have always a choice - if not whether, then how, they may endure.
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The world is made by the people who show up for the job.
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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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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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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.
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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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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.
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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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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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There is a sad disconnectedness that overcomes a library when its owner is gone.
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What you are is a question only you can answer.
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My home is not a place, it is people.