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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.
Lois McMaster Bujold
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Lois McMaster Bujold
Age: 75
Born: 1949
Born: November 2
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Science Fiction Writer
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Columbus
Ohio
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More quotes by Lois McMaster Bujold
Real destiny takes everything-the last drop of blood, and strip out your veins to be sure-and gives it back doubled. Quadrupled. A thousand-fold! But you can't give halves. You have to give it all. I know. I swear. I've come back from the dead to speak the truth to you. Real destiny gives you a mountain of life, and puts you on top of it.
Lois McMaster Bujold
I've described my usual writing process as scrambling from peak to peak on inspiration through foggy valleys of despised logic. Inspiration is better when you can get it.
Lois McMaster Bujold
Most people go through their whole lives without killing anybody. False argument.
Lois McMaster Bujold
The principle difference between heaven and hell is the company you keep there.
Lois McMaster Bujold
I wanted to give you a victory. But by their essential nature triumphs can’t be given.
Lois McMaster Bujold
The gods' most savage curses come upon us as answers to our own prayers. Prayer is a dangerous business.
Lois McMaster Bujold
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.
Lois McMaster Bujold
A price is something you get. A cost is something you lose.
Lois McMaster Bujold
If you can't do what you want, do what you can.
Lois McMaster Bujold
The gods give no gifts without hooks embedded.
Lois McMaster Bujold
People give themselves to you, in their talking, and in other ways, if you are quiet and patient and let them, and not in such a damned rush to give yourself to them you go bat-blind and deaf.
Lois McMaster Bujold
War is not its own end, except in some catastrophic slide into absolute damnation. It's peace that's wanted. Some better peace than the one you started with.
Lois McMaster Bujold
Guard your honor. Let your reputation fall where it will. And outlive the bastards.
Lois McMaster Bujold
If there's no game, isn't winning a pretty meaningless concept?
Lois McMaster Bujold
Honor is what you know about yourself.
Lois McMaster Bujold
A tactical retreat is not a bad response to a surprise assault, you know. First you survive. Then you choose your own ground. Then you counterattack.
Lois McMaster Bujold
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.
Lois McMaster Bujold
I am not schizoid. A little manic-depressive, maybe. 'Know thyself.' We try, sir.
Lois McMaster Bujold
Growing up, I have discovered over time, is rather like housework: never finished.
Lois McMaster Bujold
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.
Lois McMaster Bujold
