Diane > Diane's Quotes

“I opened a book and in I strode.
Now nobody can find me.
I've left my chair, my house, my road,
My town and my world behind me.
I'm wearing the cloak, I've slipped on the ring,
I've swallowed the magic potion.
I've fought with a dragon, dined with a king
And dived in a bottomless ocean.
I opened a book and made some friends.
I shared their tears and laughter
And followed their road with its bumps and bends
To the happily ever after.
I finished my book and out I came.
The cloak can no longer hide me.
My chair and my house are just the same,
But I have a book inside me.”
― Julia Donaldson

“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.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, Labyrinth

“Ignorance is not stupidity, but it might as well be. And I do not like feeling stupid.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, The Curse of Chalion

“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.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, Memory

“If you would tell me the heart of a man, tell me not what he reads, but what he rereads.”
― Francois Mauriac

“A man's mind is stretched by a new idea or sensation, and never shrinks back to its former dimensions.”
― Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., Autocrat of the Breakfast Table

“I need to check your ankle.”
“Ask.”
“If you object, I—”
“Giving me a chance to object is not the same as asking permission. You’re used to telling people what to do. That works with those guards you’re in charge of. You aren’t in charge of me. You have to ask.”
One corner of his mouth turned up. “It’s more efficient my way.”
“If your primary goal in life is efficiency, you should just die.”
That startled him. His head actually jerked back. “What?”
“The most efficient way to live a life is to die a couple seconds after you’re born. Pfft. Done.” She dusted her hands to demonstrate that. “It’s too late for you to achieve optimal efficiency, but you could still . . .”
― Eileen Wilks, Blood Challenge

“Regrets are the most useless form of guilt. They always arrive too late to do any good.”
― Eileen Wilks, Tempting Danger

“Dogs make sense. They understand hierarchy and the need to cooperate. They come when you call them. A cat though—a cat will take your number and get back to you. Maybe. If he’s in a good mood.”
― Eileen Wilks, Mortal Danger

“She wasn’t entertainment for him. He
didn’t need her to make him laugh or bolster his ego or to figure him out so he wouldn’t have to. A lot of men who said they were looking for a relationship really wanted a combination sex buddy, therapist, and mirror.”
― Eileen Wilks, Mortal Danger

“My feelings were hurt. Once I started I couldn't seem to let it go.
Be strange if the person who matters most in the whole world couldn't hurt your feelings, wouldn't it?”
― Eileen Wilks, Blood Magic

“Humans were peculiar. They were by turns squeamish and appallingly violent.”
― Eileen Wilks, On the Prowl

“Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, A Civil Campaign

“I've always thought tests are a gift. And great tests are a great gift. To fail the test is a misfortune. But to refuse the test is to refuse the gift, and something worse, more irrevocable, than misfortune.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, Shards of Honour

“Some people grow into their dreams, instead of out of them.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, Komarr

“Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.”
― Napoleon Bonaparte

“Events may be horrible or inescapable. Men have always a choice - if not whether, then how, they may endure.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, The Curse of Chalion

“Aim high. You may still miss the target, but at least you won't shoot your foot off.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, Miles in Love

“The dead cannot cry out for justice; it is a duty of the living to do so for them.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, Diplomatic Immunity

“There is no more hollow feeling than to stand with your honor shattered at your feet while soaring public reputation wraps you in rewards. That's soul-destroying. The other way around is merely very, very irritating.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, A Civil Campaign

“The world is made by the people who show up for the job.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, CryoBurn

“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, The Curse of Chalion

“You don't pay back your parents. You can't. The debt you owe them gets collected by your children, who hand it down in turn. It's a sort of entailment. Or if you don't have children of the body, it's left as a debt to your common humanity. Or to your God, if you possess or are possessed by one.

The family economy evades calculation in the gross planetary product. It's the only deal I know where, when you give more than you get, you aren't bankrupted - but rather, vastly enriched.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, A Civil Campaign

“I've got forward momentum. There's no virtue in it. It's just a balancing act. I don't dare stop. ”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, The Warrior's Apprentice

“If you can't do what you want, do what you can.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, Miles Errant

“Too late, he recalled Miles's dictum that the reward for a job well done was usually a harder job.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, A Civil Campaign

“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.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, Young Miles

“Experience suggests it doesn't matter so much how you got here, as what you do after you arrive.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, Barrayar

“When you give each other everything, it becomes an even trade. Each wins all.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, A Civil Campaign

“This is important! But you have to stay absolutely cool. I may be completely off-base, and panicking prematurely."
"I don't think so. I think you're panicking post-maturely. In fact, if you were panicking any later it would be practically posthumously. I've been panicking for days.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, Miles, Mystery, and Mayhem