Quote

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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Lois McMaster Bujold
Age: 75
Born: 1949
Born: November 2
Author
Novelist
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
Columbus
Ohio
Excellence
Prowess
Hope
Anywhere
Beds
Desire
Bed
Fetters
Tell
Prison
Feather
True
Lies
Prisons
May
Comfortable
Feathers
Find
Sure
Iron
Made
Bars
Fetter
Men
Lying

More quotes by 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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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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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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A weapon is a device for making your enemy change his mind.
Lois McMaster Bujold
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For me, writing is more a process of discovering the book than planning it.
Lois McMaster Bujold
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The gods' most savage curses come upon us as answers to our own prayers. Prayer is a dangerous business.
Lois McMaster Bujold
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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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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
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Colonel Otto, do you have a, perhaps, fuller and more detailed account than your preliminary one of why my Imperial Security building is now largely an underground installation? From a technical perspective.
Lois McMaster Bujold
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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.
Lois McMaster Bujold
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If there's no game, isn't winning a pretty meaningless concept?
Lois McMaster Bujold
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The world is made by the people who show up for the job.
Lois McMaster Bujold
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When the time comes to leap in faith whether you have your eyes open or closed or scream all the way down or not makes no practical difference.
Lois McMaster Bujold
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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.
Lois McMaster Bujold
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I wanted to give you a victory. But by their essential nature triumphs can’t be given.
Lois McMaster Bujold
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Adversity does teach who your real friends are.
Lois McMaster Bujold
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Some people grow into their dreams, instead of out of them.
Lois McMaster Bujold
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The will to be stupid is a very powerful force, but there are always alternatives.
Lois McMaster Bujold
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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
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It’s important that someone celebrate our existence, she objected amiably. People are the only mirror we have to see ourselves in. The domain of all meaning. All virtue, all evil, are contained only in people. There is none in the universe at large. Solitary confinement is a punishment in every human culture.
Lois McMaster Bujold