Quotes from Falling Free

“On the sixth day God saw He couldn't do it all, so He created ENGINEERS”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, quote from Falling Free

“This is the most important thing I will ever say to you. The human mind is the ultimate testing device. You can take all the notes you want on the technical data, anything you forget you can look up again, but this must be engraved on your hearts in letters of fire. There is nothing, nothing, nothing, more important to me in the men and women I train than their absolute personal integrity. Whether you function as welders or inspectors, the laws of physics are implacable lie detectors. You may fool men. You will never fool metal. That’s all.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, quote from Falling Free

“It's an ancient and honorable term for the final step in any engineering project. Turn it on, see if it smokes.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, quote from Falling Free

“There was no limit to what one man might do, if he gave all, and held back nothing.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, quote from Falling Free

“If you ever have to make a choice between learning and inspiration, boy, choose learning. It works more of the time.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, quote from Falling Free

“It's not over, is it?" Silver said quietly to Leo, as they floated out of Minchenko's way. "Somehow I thought our troubles would be over if only we could get away from Mr. Van Atta."

Leo shook his head. A jubilant grin still kept crooking up the corner of his mouth. He took one of her upper hands.

"Our troubles would have been over if Brucie-Baby had scored a hit. Or if the vortex mirror had blown up in the middle of the jump. Or if- Don't be afraid of trouble, Silver. They're a sign of life. We'll deal with them together - tomorrow".”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, quote from Falling Free

“There is nothing, nothing, nothing more important to me in the men and women I train than their absolute personal integrity.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, quote from Falling Free

“Were you BORN inhuman or did you grow so by degrees?! MS, MD, PHD?”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, quote from Falling Free

“The shuttle bumped, bounced, banged, rocked, and roared out over the flat, cracked surface. She was sorry she had never made a pass at Leo. Clearly, you could die while waiting for other people to start your life for you. Her seat harness cut across her breasts as deceleration sucked her forward and the rumbling vibration rattled her teeth.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, quote from Falling Free

“I do know, dividing our energies among a thousand what-ifs instead of concentrating them for the one sure next-step is a kind of self-sabotage. It’s not what we do next week, it’s what we do next that counts most.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, quote from Falling Free

“Andy was clutching her blue T-shirt. She rolled over, as Tony had, palms to the surface, and pushed up. Andy, turning his head toward his father, reached out with his upper hands and tried to shove off from Claire with his lowers. The floor leaped up and smacked him. For”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, quote from Falling Free

“Her lips thinned, but she ignored the bait. “Schedules have been moved up in all departments, you know. Claire received her new reproduction assignment. It didn’t include Tony.” “Reproduction assignment? You mean, having a baby?” Leo could feel his face flushing. Somewhere within him, a long-controlled steam pressure began to build. “Do you hide what you’re really doing from yourselves with those weasel-words, too? And here I thought the propaganda was just for us peons.” Yei started to speak, but Leo overrode her, bursting out, “Good God! Were you born inhuman, or did you grow so by degrees—M.S., M.D., Ph.D. . . .” Yei”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, quote from Falling Free

“Much worse. We couldn’t get any of those to come at all. Some of them are visibly fused. Some idiot must have welded them.” “Welded, yes. But not by some idiot. By the sun.” “Leo, it doesn’t get that hot—” “Not directly. What you’re seeing is spontaneous vacuum diffusion welding. Metal molecules are evaporating off the surfaces of the pieces in the vacuum. Slowly, to be sure, but it’s a measurable phenomenon. On the clamped areas they migrate into their neighboring surfaces and eventually achieve quite a nice bond. A little faster for the hot pieces on the sun side, a little slower for the cold pieces in the shade—but I’ll bet some of those clamps have been in place for twenty years.” “Oh. But what do we do about them?” “They’ll have to be cut.” Pramod’s lips pursed in worry. “That will slow things down.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, quote from Falling Free

“And so Leo and Silver’s beautiful scheme for peacefully detaching the downsiders, hammered out through four secret planning sessions, was blown away on a breath. Wasted was the flattery, the oblique suggestion, that had gone into convincing Van Atta that it was his idea to gather, unusually, the entire Habitat downsider staff at once and make his announcement in a speech persuading them all they were being commended, not condemned . . . The shaped charges to cut the lecture module away from the Habitat at the touch of a button were all in place. The emergency breath masks to supply the nearly three hundred bodies with oxygen for the few hours necessary to push the module around the planet to the transfer station were carefully hidden within. The two pusher crews were drilled, their pushers fueled and ready. Fool”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, quote from Falling Free

“Leo will be coming with us,” Emma offered, trying to sound optimistic. “He’s a downsider.” “I’m not sure that’s exactly his field of expertise,” said Claire honestly, trying to picture Leo as a medtech. He didn’t care for hydraulic systems, he’d said.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, quote from Falling Free

“Leo could not, afterwards, recall running forward or swinging Van Atta around to face him, but only Van Atta’s surprised, open-mouthed expression. “Bruce,” he sang through a red haze, “you smarmy creep—lay off.” The uppercut to Van Atta’s jaw that punctuated this command was surprisingly effective, considering it was the first time Leo had struck a man in anger in his life. Van Atta sprawled backwards on the concrete. Leo”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, quote from Falling Free

“Between one breath and the next, the vision took him. It came not as a chain of reason, more words words words, but as a blinding image, all complete in its first moment, inherent, holistic, gestalt, inspired. Every hour of his life from now on would be but the linear exploration of its fullness.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, quote from Falling Free

“Dr. Yei,” Bannerji objected, “if you’re trying to knock a man out you’ve got to hit him a lot harder than that.” Yei recoiled fearfully as Van Atta surged up out of his seat. “I didn’t want to risk killing him . . .” “Why not?” muttered Bannerji under his breath. Furiously,”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, quote from Falling Free

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Popular quotes

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“She is dearer to me than life. But her suffering comes from within, and only she can rid herself of it. For she is free.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, quote from No Exit and Three Other Plays

“Where did this whole thing begin? If what we think of as reality is just a pattern that somebody brought Outside, and the universe just popped into bring, then whoever it was is probably still wandering around giving off universes wherever she goes So where did she come from? And what was there before she started doing it? And how did Outside come to exist, for that matter?”
That's Inspace thinking,” said Olhado. “That's the way you conceive of things when you still believe in space and time as absolutes. You think of everything starting and stopping, of things having origins, because that's the way it is in the observable universe. The thing is, Outside there's no rules like that at all. Outside was always there and always will be there. The number of philotes there is infinite, and all of them always existed. No mater how many of them you pull out and put into organized universes, there'll be just as many left as there always were”
But somebody had to start making universes.”
Why?” asked Olhado.
Because-because I-“
Nobody ever started. It's always been going on. I mean, if it weren’t already going on, it couldn’t start. Outside where there weren’t any patterns, it would be impossible to conceive of a pattern. They can’t act, by definition, because they literally can’t even find themselves.”
But how could it have always been going on?”
Think of it as this moment in time, the reality we live in at this moment, this condition of the entire universe-of all the universes-”
You mean now.”
Right. Think of it as if now were the surface of a sphere. Time is moving forward through the chaos of Outside like the surface of an expanding sphere, a balloon inflating. On the outside, chaos. On the inside, reality. Always growing-like you said, Valentine. Popping up new universes all the time.”
But where did this balloon come from?”
OK, you’ve got the balloon. The expanding sphere. Only now think of it as a sphere with an infinite radius.”
Valentine tried to think of what that would mean. “The surface would be completely flat.”
That’s right”
And you could never go all the way around it”
That’s right, too. Infinitely large. Impossible even to count all the universes that exist on the reality side. And now, starting from the edge, you get on a starship and start heading inward toward the center. The farther in you go, the older everything is. All the old universes back and back. When do you get to the first one?”
You don’t” said Valentine. “Not it you’re traveling at a finate rate.”
You don’t reach the center of a sphere on infinite radius, if you’re starting at the surface, because no matter how far you go, no matter how quickly, the center, the beginning, is always infinitely far away.”
And that’s where the universe began.”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Xenocide

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