H. R. McMaster Quotes

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.

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.

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.

It was never what I wanted to buy that held my heart's hope. It was what I wanted to be.

The world is made by the people who show up for the job.

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.

I have a catch-phrase to describe my plot-generation technique -- 'What's the worst possible thing I can do to these people?'

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.

History does not so much repeat as echo, I suppose.

I began my writing career in a very isolated place and time.

I'm sorry. I can love you. I can grieve for you, or with you. I can share your pain. But I cannot judge you.

If you ever have to make a choice between learning and inspiration, choose learning. It works most of the time.

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.

I am not schizoid. A little manic-depressive, maybe." "'Know thyself.'" "We try, sir.

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.

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."

You have to be careful who you let define your good.

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.

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.

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.

No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy. Not when the enemy is me.

Too late, he recalled Miles's dictum that the reward for a job well done was usually a harder job.

The Imperial Service could win a war without coffee, but would prefer not to have to.

A price is something you get. A cost is something you lose.

As the week wore on, Ivan contemplated the merits of inertia as a problem-solving technique with growing favor

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

My dinner party,' Miles grated. 'It's just breaking up.' And sinking. All souls feared lost.

For a while, I thought I was going mad. At last, I became reconciled to my despair. The medications helped, too, I thought, sir.

All true wealth is biological.

Some men just aren't cut out for paternity. Better they should realize it before and not after they become responsible for a son.

It is always easier to get forgiveness than permission.

If there's no game, isn't winning a pretty meaningless concept?

Your Reverence, I do not hate any man in this world enough to inflict the results of my prayers upon him.

Seems like half my anxiety dreams are about airports.

Read, or you will be missing something extraordinary.

The gods give no gifts without hooks embedded.

I am not a fate worse than death, dammit!

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.

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.

The good face pain. But the great? They embrace it.

There was no limit to what one man might do, if he gave all, and held back nothing.

Second sight is redundant to reason anyway.

I've always tried to write the kind of book I most loved to read: character-centered adventure.

I am increasingly convinced that technological culture is the entire root of women's liberation.

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.

Miles is... Miles; close to a force of nature, climbing up out of his own pages and escaping subordination to any opinion of mine.

Hi, I'm a hero, but I can't tell you why. It's classified.

[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.

Advice is a peculiar commodity. Those who have the capacity to give good advice generally have too much sense to waste their time trying to get rid of it.

[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.