Lois McMaster Bujold Real Quotations

Utterly bleak and black is not the sum of realism. All the other colors are real, too.

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.

The real unforgivable acts are committed by calm men in beautiful green silk rooms, who deal death wholesale, by the shipload, without lust, without anger, or desire, or any redeeming emotion to excuse them but cold fear of some pretended future. But the crimes they hope to prevent in that future are imaginary. The ones they commit in the present - they are real.

Our children change us.. whether they live or not.

Experience suggests it doesn't matter so much how you got here, as what you do after you arrive.

Adversity does teach who your real friends are.

Honesty is the only way with anyone, when you'll be so close as to be living inside each other's skins.

What you are is a question only you can answer.