Quote

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
Author
Novelist
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
Columbus
Ohio
Guy
Plot
Character
Findings
Thing
Finding
Rule
Novel
Worst
Plots
Possible
Centered
Asks
Novels

More quotes by Lois McMaster Bujold

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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
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But pain seems to me an insufficient reason not to embrace life. Being dead is quite painless. Pain, like time, is going to come on regardless. Question is, what glorious moments can you win from life in addition to the pain?
Lois McMaster Bujold
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If the truth doesn't save us, what does that say about us?
Lois McMaster Bujold
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Too late, he recalled Miles's dictum that the reward for a job well done was usually a harder job.
Lois McMaster Bujold
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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
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Only the saints would joke so about the gods, because it was either joke or scream, and they alone knew it was all the same to the gods.
Lois McMaster Bujold
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Events may be horrible or inescapable. Men have always a choice - if not whether, then how, they may endure.
Lois McMaster Bujold
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Well, what is a blessing but a curse from another point of view?
Lois McMaster Bujold
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If you can't be seven feet tall, be seven feet smart.
Lois McMaster Bujold
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The principle difference between heaven and hell is the company you keep there.
Lois McMaster Bujold
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Never argue with a pedant over nomenclature. It wastes your time and annoys the pedant.
Lois McMaster Bujold
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If you desire a man to tell you comfortable lies about your prowess, and so fetter any hope of true excellence, I'm sure you may find one anywhere. Not all prisons are made of iron bars. Some are made of feather beds.
Lois McMaster Bujold
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Surely only correct understanding could lead to correct action.
Lois McMaster Bujold
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You couldn't be that good and not know it, somewhere in your secret heart, however much you'd been abused into affecting public humility.
Lois McMaster Bujold
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For a while, I thought I was going mad. At last, I became reconciled to my despair. The medications helped, too, I thought, sir.
Lois McMaster Bujold
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Miles added it to his life's lessons list. Call it Rule 27B. Never make key tactical decisions while having electro-convulsive seizures.
Lois McMaster Bujold
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Read, or you will be missing something extraordinary.
Lois McMaster Bujold
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The world demands I make good choices on no information, and then blames my maidenhood for my mistakes, as if my maidenhood were responsible for my ignorance. Ignorance is not stupidity, but it might as well be. And I do not like feeling stupid.
Lois McMaster Bujold
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From fried witchetty grubs to gold-plated turnips, when you're a writer you never know what's going to appear on your plate next. It keeps a woman alert, it does.
Lois McMaster Bujold
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The most important thing about quests, he decided, was not in finding what you went looking for, but in finding what you never could have imagined before you ventured forth.
Lois McMaster Bujold