9 Lois McMaster Bujold Quotes on Family

Lois McMaster Bujold quotes on family

4. 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.'

12. Children might or might not be a blessing, but to create them and then fail them was surely damnation.

15. My home is not a place, it is people.

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

73. You don't pay back your parents. You can't. The debt you owe them gets collected by your children, who hand it down in turn. It's a sort of entailment. Or if you don't have children of the body, it's left as a debt to your common humanity. Or to your God, if you possess or are possessed by one.

82. A good friend of my son's is a son to me.

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

104. Aren't family squabbles jolly fun? Bleeding ulcers run in my family, we give them to each other.

141. Acting or reacting, we carry him in us. You can't walk away from him any more than I can. Whether you travel toward or away, he'll be the compass. He'll be the glass, full of subtle colors and astigmatisms, through which all new things will be viewed. I too have a father who haunts me, and I know.