"I can’t quit, once I’ve started. I’ve been told I’m pathologically persistent. I can’t quit."
Lois McMaster Bujold is an American speculative fiction writer. She has won the Hugo Award for best novel four times, matching Robert A. Heinlein's record. Bujold is best known for her Vorkosigan Saga, a series of science fiction novels featuring Miles Vorkosigan, a physically impaired interstellar spy and mercenary admiral from the planet Barrayar, set approximately 1000 years in the future. The
"I am a shy person when allowed. I regard a lot of the PR — s, speeches, appearances, media interviews — with much the same dismay as a non-swimming parent would contemplate the prospect of jumping into a raging torrent to rescue their child. One doesnt really see how any good can come of it, but one cant not jump. ("My baby book, help, it is drowning!") I need to get in touch with my surly side more, I suppose, to learn to say "no" to nice people who like me."
"Its an interesting problem, though, for writers of popular series. Should one throw ones protagonist over the Reichenbach Falls, or let him fade gently into the sunset of the Sussex Downs, keeping bees? (Or both?) No matter which the writer chooses, someone will be unhappy about it. If ones audience is large enough, it will collectively demand every possible closure, most mutually exclusive."
"Writing is a very redemptive profession, because all of your mistakes can be reclassified as raw material. ... All those things that went awry become material and become more manageable, psychologically and otherwise. ... My five years I spent wandering around in college and left without a degree (to my parents dismay) — all turned out to be useful to my career ..."
"All great human deeds both consume and transform their doers. Consider an athlete, or a scientist, or an artist, or an independent business creator. In the service of their goals they lay down time and energy and many other choices and pleasures; in return, they become most truly themselves. A false destiny may be spotted by the fact that it consumes without transforming, without giving back the enlarged self. Becoming a parent is one of these basic human transformational deeds. By this act, we change our fundamental relationship with the universe — if nothing else, we lose our place as the pinnacle and end-point of evolution, and become a mere link. The demands of motherhood especially consume the old self, and replace it with something new, often better and wiser, sometimes wearier or disillusioned, or tense and terrified, certainly more self-knowing, but never the same again."
"“I could bring almost nothing—I scarcely knew what to choose.” “Think of the vast amounts of money we shall save on shipping charges, then.”"
"I suppose my determination to be a soldier stems from that date. I mean the real thing, not the parades and the uniforms and the glamour, but the logistics, the offensive advantage, the speed and surprise—the power. A better-prepared, stronger, tougher, faster, meaner son-of-a-bitch than any who came through that door."