Elizabeth Moon Quotes & Sayings

Other people, including me, have written books with main characters who were old and rich. Or old and brilliant. Old sages, old wizards, old rich people. — Elizabeth Moon

The test of a sword is not its polish but its temper — Elizabeth Moon

To the gods belong power, and to us the work of our hands. — Elizabeth Moon

On hers . . . a mess, the teacher had said, but she had already heard the other children exclaim over what she could see for herself. Magnificence, glory, all the things they weren't supposed to have. She woke up with tears still wet on her cheeks, and blinked them out of her eyes. Something vividly red swung in and out of view at the window. Dayvine trumpets, in the breeze - the vine on that side of the house must have grown a foot overnight. Barto had insisted on keeping the house free of vines; she lay there and felt a deep happiness work out from her bones at the sight of those flowers dancing in the sunlight. — Elizabeth Moon

So when I got out of the military, I went back to school in biology, and earned a biology degree at the University of Texas, and then did some graduate work in it. — Elizabeth Moon

Of all the trades, my lord Captain, the trade of money itself must be most closely observed. It is too easy to cheat, too easy to shave a coin or pass false coinage, too easy to take as one's own the money entrusted to us by others. We must be diligent, we must be honest, and we must be unfailingly harsh with those who lie to or steal from those who trust them. Else no one will trust any of us, and when that trust fails, we are all back to trading a cow for two pigs or a shirt for a loaf of bread. — Elizabeth Moon

My advice is, the next time you see someone you think you need to rescue, walk quickly away on the far side of the street. — Elizabeth Moon

If you cannot read it, how could you catalog it? — Elizabeth Moon

Sometimes I wonder how normal normal people are, and I wonder that most in the grocery store. — Elizabeth Moon

You have fought a hard battle, in hard conditions, and held a position until help came. Think of it like that. — Elizabeth Moon

What do you want for them when they're grown? Surround them with people who are that - the kind of adults you want them to be. Children are such mimics ... if they see honesty and fair dealing and kindness, they will copy that. — Elizabeth Moon

Of death I am as certain as any mortal, Ammerlin, but defeat is certain only in despair. — Elizabeth Moon

You were not bred to avoid trouble," Tobai said. "Your family takes it on, shakes it like a dog shaking a rat, and tosses it to one side. — Elizabeth Moon

I like it that order exists somewhere even if it shatters near me. — Elizabeth Moon

Free of the demands, the judgments, and the petty tyrannies of others. — Elizabeth Moon

Now my mother, interestingly enough, was not a feminist in her own mind. — Elizabeth Moon

You don't have to,' I say. 'You are normal. You have a job with tenure. You have Lucia and this house.' I cannot say the rest that I think, that he is easy in his body, that he sees and hears and tastes and feels what others do, so his reality matches theirs. — Elizabeth Moon

It is all knowing what to start with. If you start in the right place and follow all the steps, you will get to the right end. — Elizabeth Moon

If someone means well, but does ill, the ill is still done - and the consequences still exist. Besides, if intent forgives wrong, then any wrongdoer can claim good intent. — Elizabeth Moon

I actually feel that the different kinds of stories come out of different parts of my brain. — Elizabeth Moon

I like swordwork. It's like riding, that way - it forces concentration, and thus opens up the world. — Elizabeth Moon

It's hard to hold the focus that strongly on a single character for that long. — Elizabeth Moon

My first degree came years before my second. I had wanted to be a physicist, but I flunked calculus. — Elizabeth Moon

Nobody but the residents would call this sector the Hub Worlds, unless they thought the rest of the wheel had fallen off. — Elizabeth Moon

No, but a cello is the perfect string bass for an accordion. Works with it beautifully. — Elizabeth Moon

And this, she saw, her dream had done. She had built against that fear a vision of power not wholly selfish - power to protect not only herself, but others. And that vision - however partial it had been in those days - was worth following. For it led not away from the fear, as a dream of rule might do, but back into it. The pattern of her life - as she saw it then, clear and far away and painted in bright colors - the pattern of her life was like an intricate song, or the way the Kuakgan talked of the grove's interlacing trees. There below were the dream's roots, tangled in fear and despair, nourished in the death of friends, the bones of the strong, the blood of the living, and there high above were the dream's images, bright in the sun like banners or the flowering trees of spring. And to be that banner, or that flowering branch, meant being nourished by the same fears: meant encompassing them, not rejecting them. — Elizabeth Moon

I had, of course, no model for that sort of woman being married, but I can make that up as I go along. — Elizabeth Moon

Miss Sevier in high school told us the police think we have knives or guns in our pockets and that they have killed people who were just trying to get out their IDs. I think that is wrong, but I read where the court decided it was all right if the police were really scared. Yet if anybody else is really scared of the police it's not all right for the scared person to kill a policeman. — Elizabeth Moon

Hard to be a physics major at Rice University if you have flunked calculus. — Elizabeth Moon

I was writing fiction, but not finishing fiction. — Elizabeth Moon

This individual does not know where initiative ends and rocket-propelled idiocy begins. — Elizabeth Moon

Paks, if you've got a fault it's that you're too willing to be ruled. I know what you'll say - you'll say that's how a good soldier is. — Elizabeth Moon

A tree is alive, and thus it is always more than you can see. Roots to leaves, yes-those you can, in part, see. But it is more-it is the lichens and moss and ferns that grow on its bark, the life too small to see that lives among its roots, a community we know of, but do not think on. It is every fly and bee and beetle that uses it for shelter or food, every bird that nests in its branches. Every one an individual, and yet every one part of the tree, and the tree part of every one. — Elizabeth Moon

One of my degrees was a science degree in biology. — Elizabeth Moon

When a person responds emotionally to intellectual things, or emotionally only to traditional emotional things - I find that an interesting break between myself and some other writers and fans. — Elizabeth Moon

Even if a tamed wolf makes a good sheepdog, he will never understand how the sheep feel ... You are most fortunate. For having been, as you thought, a coward, and helpless to fight - you know what that is like. You know what bitterness that feeling breeds - you know in your own heart what kind of evil it brings. And so you are most fit to fight it where it occurs. — Elizabeth Moon

And as Paksenarrion is there, perhaps she will ride back with me to Fin Panir to see the necklace. — Elizabeth Moon

it is much the same, I daresay, wherever and whenever men desire power and the use of power on others. — Elizabeth Moon

People are people, messy and mutable, combining differently with one another from day to day - even hour to hour. — Elizabeth Moon

It is not wrong to be different. Sometimes it is hard, but it is not wrong. — Elizabeth Moon

I can become very emotional about math, although I'm not that good at it. — Elizabeth Moon

What it boils down to is that parenting a child with autism is a difficult job; writing about it is far easier. — Elizabeth Moon

I love biomedical science, I love astronomy, and you can't really do much with those in a fantasy setting. — Elizabeth Moon

Motivation is the power behind plot. — Elizabeth Moon

When I was starting out, I did not do short fiction well, because I kept wanting to write books. — Elizabeth Moon

When - notice that I do not say if, being granted almost as much stubbornness as you, by Gird's grace - when you find that you can swear your honor to Gird's fellowship, it will be my pleasure to give and receive your strokes. Is that satisfactory, or have you more conditions for a Marshal-General of Gird, and Captain-Temporal of the High Lord? Paks — Elizabeth Moon

Everything in my life that I value has been gained at the cost of not saying what I really think and saying what they want me to say. — Elizabeth Moon

My personal feeling about science fiction is that it's always in some way connected to the real world, to our everyday world. — Elizabeth Moon

You'll find, someday," Paks found herself saying, "that your own tongue cuts you worse than any blade. I — Elizabeth Moon

I try so hard, and it is still not working. I wear the same clothes as the others. I say the same words at the same times: good morning, hi, how are you, I'm fine, good night, please, thank you, you're welcome, no thank you, not right now. I obey the traffic laws; I obey the rules. I have ordinary furniture in my apartment, and I play my unusual music very softly or use headphones. But it is not enough. Even as hard as I try, the real people still want me to change, to be like them. — Elizabeth Moon

Having a mother who had been an aeronautical engineer convinced me that more things should be open to women. — Elizabeth Moon

I used to not back down from a challenge. — Elizabeth Moon

No matter what I do, no matter how predictable I try to make my life, it will not be any more predictable than the rest of the world. Which is chaotic. — Elizabeth Moon

I regarded drugs as somewhat like rattlesnakes - it's possible to pick one up without getting bit, but why bother? — Elizabeth Moon

Intelligent men think up ways to get themselves in tangles a stupid man would never imagine. — Elizabeth Moon

Never show how smart you are, dears, or someone will envy you. — Elizabeth Moon

But look at it this way. Anything is a commodity to someone. In a very large universe, your aunt Gracie's cannonballs may be someone else's favorite underwear. — Elizabeth Moon

There is simple ignorance, not knowing, and willful ignorance that refuses to know, that covers the light of knowledge with the dark blanket of bias. — Elizabeth Moon

Having to struggle gave me the chance to demonstrate strength of character.
The Speed of Dark — Elizabeth Moon

If a military life was long periods of boredom punctuated by moments of stark terror - as one of her instructors had said - then civilian life seemed to be long periods of boredom interrupted by moments of dismal reflection. — Elizabeth Moon

You can also make explicit certain social problems which, again, would be prejudged or not encountered at all in real life, because people have set up defenses against it. Fantasy allows you to get past defenses. — Elizabeth Moon

Metaphorically, Tom said, if you take knowledge as light, and ignorance as dark, there does sometimes seem to be a real presence to the dark
to ignorance. Something more tactile and muscley than just lack of knowledge. A sort of will to ignorance. It would explain some politicians. — Elizabeth Moon

Empress of the Universe would be way too much work. I'd have to wear fancy clothes, probably including lady shoes with pointed toes, and could no longer slouch into the study in PJs and slippers. Someone would (avert!) straighten my desk. Someone would reorganize my yarn stash ... in fact, they'd assign someone else to knit my socks, thus depriving me of an excuse to rest my brain while pretending to accomplish something useful. — Elizabeth Moon

Most eyes have more than one color, but usually they're related. Blue eyes may have two shades of blue, or blue and gray, or blue and green, or even a fleck or two of brown. Most people don't notice that. When I first went to get my state ID card, the form asked for eye color. I tried to write in all the colors in my own eyes, but the space wasnt big enough. They told me to put 'brown'. I put 'brown', but that is not the only color in my eyes. It is just the color that people see because they do not really look atr other people's eyes. — Elizabeth Moon

I like the Beatles, of course, but that's when I grew up. — Elizabeth Moon

She did not want to be Bilong's mother, or her grandmother. She had done with these roles, with being a good child, a good wife, a good mother. She had put seventy-odd years into it; she had worked hard at it; now she wanted to be that Ofelia who painted and carved and sang in an old cracked voice with strange creatures and their stranger music. The — Elizabeth Moon

There are relatively few science fiction or fantasy books with the main character being an old person. — Elizabeth Moon

One thing nobody can do better than you is be you. — Elizabeth Moon

Apparently they didn't realize that people who buy thousands of rounds of ammo are likely to know how to use it. We — Elizabeth Moon

It may be far in the future, but there's some kind of logical way to get from where we are to where the science fiction is. — Elizabeth Moon

I've taught Sunday school, I've sung in the choir, I directed a choir. — Elizabeth Moon

Wanting peace does not bring it ... and if trouble comes, a king or a realm must be prepared. — Elizabeth Moon

But in fantasy, you can make a complete break, and you can put people in a situation where they are confronted with things that they would not confront in the real world. — Elizabeth Moon

This has the potential to be a rolling doughnut, — Elizabeth Moon

I always thought my questions were wrong questions because no one else asked them. Maybe no one thought of them. Maybe darkness got there first. Maybe I am the first light touching a gulf of ignorance ... Maybe my questions matter. — Elizabeth Moon

Normal' is a dryer setting. — Elizabeth Moon

In a novel, I could submerge my ego in a character's and let his perceptions take over. — Elizabeth Moon

I revear all the gods but those that delight in cruelty. If Ra's light is kindly in your eyes than may his light shine on us all. — Elizabeth Moon

When I was quite young, she was working in a hardware store, so I grew up knowing about hardware. — Elizabeth Moon

His implant woke him at three A.M. local time, when he was, for reasons he never understood, dreaming about dancing fish. — Elizabeth Moon

Yet powerful as they were, as powerful as music that brings heart-piercing pain, tears, laughter, with its enchantments, they were as music, subordinate to their own creator. Humans need not, Paks saw, worship their immortality, their cool wisdom, their knowledge of the taig, their ability to repattern mortal perceptions. In brief mortal lives humans met challenges no elf could meet, learned strategies no elf could master, chose evil or good more direct and dangerous than elf could perceive. Humans were shaped for conflict, as elves for harmony; each needed the other's balance of wisdom, but must cleave to its own nature. It was easy for an immortal to counsel patience, withdrawal until a danger passed . . . — Elizabeth Moon