Skip to content

Quotes from Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen — Lois McMaster Bujold

born 1949 United States

← All quotes by Lois McMaster Bujold

13 quotes

It only takes one nutcase to decide that you, not he, are the reason his life sucks, and set out to even the score. Nutcases are not in short supply here.

Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen (2016)

Babies are just a challenge. Teenagers are a nightmare.

Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen (2016)

No, do not let your fears eat the happiness in front of you. Or your grief consume your future? That was harder.

Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen (2016)

By far the most dangerous animal on the planet was an invasive species of ape.

Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen (2016)

Alas, she was dealing with management, not the engineers.

Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen (2016)

If nothing else, the arrival of actual children replaces theory with practice. And time to fret with…lack of time to breathe, sometimes.

Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen (2016)

I don’t see people, young or otherwise, as having a right to be idiots. It’s just impractical to try to stop them, unless they’re hurting somebody, and this sport—extreme art?—does not appear to be lethal.

Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen (2016)

A contractor, early? Really? Already your tale begins to resemble some drunken hallucination.

Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen (2016)

So what do you want? Really want, not just think is most prudent. Or worse, think is what I want.

Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen (2016)

“We used to call the biowar intelligence and analysis section at ImpSec HQ the Nightmare Barn,” Miles reminisced. “In a large building full of pale, overcaffeinated men, they had a reputation as being the pastiest and the twitchiest.”

Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen (2016)

She considered seventy-six. It…made no sense. Except that sometime in the past three years, she had switched from counting her years not up from birth, but back from death—a grab-bag of time not growing, but shrinking, use it or lose it.

Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen (2016)

I admit, when I picture the scenario, I keep seeing a boy of about, oh, seven. Age of reason and all that. One I could talk to, and do things with. I’m not sure how you get from the single-cell stage to that one, though.

Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen (2016)

There’s a paradox for you. Although really it’s no more than saying that I’m satisfied with my life. Changing anything would wish people I’ve loved out of existence, and yet…there would have been other people, I suppose. Who now will never be.

Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen (2016)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Lois McMaster Bujold (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.