Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
One foot in front of the other, wasn't that the grownup way of solving problems? Surely he ought to be a grownup at his age.
I have a catch-phrase to describe my plot-generation technique -- 'What's the worst possible thing I can do to these people?'
Not that I haven't leaped up into the blinding light of competence now and then. It's sustaining the altitude that defeats me.
For a while, I thought I was going mad. At last, I became reconciled to my despair. The medications helped, too, I thought, sir.
Some men just aren't cut out for paternity. Better they should realize it before and not after they become responsible for a son.
Good soldiers never pass up a chance to eat or sleep. They never know how much they'll be called on to do before the next chance.
Miles is... Miles; close to a force of nature, climbing up out of his own pages and escaping subordination to any opinion of mine.
A stunning first impression was not the same thing as love at first sight. But surely it was an invitation to consider the matter.
I do think, half of what we call madness is just some poor slob dealing with pain by a strategy that annoys the people around him.
How could you be a Great Man if history brought you no Great Events, or brought you to them at the wrong time, too young, too old?
Miles clutched Quinn's elbow. "Don't Panic." "I'm not panicking," Quinn observed, "I'm watching you panic. It's more entertaining .
All the geniuses I ever met were so just part of the time. To qualify, you only have to be great once, you know. Once when it matters.
You should have fallen in love with a happy man, if you wanted happiness. But no, you had to fall for the breathtaking beauty of pain.
When you can't do something truly useful, you tend to vent the pent up energy in something useless but available, like snappy dressing.
When you can’t do something truly useful, you tend to vent the pent up energy in something useless but available, like snappy dressing.
Miles added it to his life's lessons list. Call it Rule 27B. Never make key tactical decisions while having electro-convulsive seizures.
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.
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.
If you're trying to take a roomful of people by surprise, it's a lot easier to hit your targets if you don't yell going through the door.
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."
Yes," Vorkosigan agreed, "I could take over the universe with this army if I could ever get all their weapons pointed in the same direction.
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.
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.
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.
Whether you function as welders or inspectors, the laws of physics are implacable lie-detectors. You may fool men. You will never fool the metal.
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.
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.
I don’t duel, boy. I kill as a soldier kills, which is as a butcher kills, as quickly, efficiently, and with as least risk to myself as I can arrange.
Have you ever heard the phrase, Living well is the best revenge?" "Where I come from, someone's head in a bag is generally considered the best revenge
Since no one is perfect, it follows that all great deeds have been accomplished out of imperfection. Yet they were accomplished, somehow, all the same.
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.
I need words that mean more than they mean, words not just with height and width, but depth and weight and, and other dimensions that I cannot even name.
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.
One of the best things about writing is how it redeems, not to mention recycles, all of one's prior experiences, including or perhaps especially the failures.
Power is better than revenge. Power is a live thing, by which you reach out to grasp the future. Revenge is a dead thing, reaching out from the past to grasp you.
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.
[Koudelka] looked back, "You?! I know you! You trust beyond reason!" [Cordelia] met his eyes steadily, "Yes, it's how I get results beyond hope, as you may recall.
When you choose an action, you choose the consequences of that action. When you desire a consequence you had damned well better take the action that would create it.
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.
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.
Don't wish to be normal. Wish to be yourself. To the hilt. Find out what you're best at, and develop it, and hopscotch your weaknesses. Wish to be great at whatever you are.
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.
I think 99 percent of women's lib comes from technology making different kinds of lives possible, and then the social adjustment follows the technology - it doesn't precede it.
And this was your friend?" Cordelia raised her eyebrows. "Seems to me the only difference between your friends and your enemies is how long the stand around chatting before they shoot you.
Wikipedia is so dangerous. You go online to look up the definition of eclampsia, and three hours later you find yourself reading this earnest explanation of tentacle porn in [Japanese] anime.
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.
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.
Never underestimate the human capacity for wishful thinking and willful blindness,' said Miles. Such as a whole society of people who became so wrapped up in avoiding death, they forgot to be alive?
I'm the one that's got to die when it's time for me to die, so let me live my life the way I want to.” - Jimi Hendrix, “The dead cannot cry out for justice. It is a duty of the living to do so for them.