25 quotes
Everyone else had the look of tired patience people always got when listening to a sermon, no matter what the century.
Doomsday Book (1992)
Ah, Hollywood, where everybody wants to be in the movies and nobody’s ever bothered to watch one.
Remake (1994)
Barbie’s one of those fads whose popularity makes you lose all faith in the human race.
Bellwether (1996)
A cage is a safe place as long as nobody has the key.
Fire Watch (1985)
“Fifty-nine,” Mr. Mowen said. “That’s too many coincidences to just be a coincidence.”
Fire Watch (1985)
He sorted all the mail into three piles of “for” and “against” and “wildly insane,” then threw all of them into the wastebasket.
Fire Watch (1985)
Do you suppose Walter Hunt would have invented the safety pin if he had known that punk rockers would stick them through their cheeks?
Fire Watch (1985)
Putting books on an inaccessible platform is nearly as effective at destroying books as the shredder.
I Met a Traveller in an Antique Land (2017)
There are moments when rather than reforming the human race I’d like to abandon it altogether and go become, say, one of Dr. O’Reilly’s macaques, which have to have more sense.
Bellwether (1996)
You shouldn’t be looking for the secret to making people follow fads, you should be looking for the secret to making them think for themselves. Because that’s what science is all about.
Bellwether (1996)
“Servants don’t travel with their employers.”
“How do they do without them?”
”They don’t.”
To Say Nothing of the Dog (1998)
If they were part of the self-correction (i. e., of the space-time continuum) what did that do to the notion of free will? Or was free will part of the plan as well?
To Say Nothing of the Dog (1998)
One of the greatest difficulties I encounter in my research is that people want to believe that their dreams mean something, but all the research I’m doing seems to indicate just the opposite.
Lincoln's Dreams (1987)
It’s the light, she thought. Everyone looks like a cutthroat by torchlight. No wonder they invented electricity.
Doomsday Book (1992)
We came out on Hollywood Boulevard, on the corner of Chaos and Sensory Overload, the worst possible place to flash.
Remake (1994)
Why do only the awful things become fads? I thought. Eye-rolling and Barbie and bread pudding. Why never chocolate cheesecake or thinking for yourself?
Bellwether (1996)
Nobody deserves this. “Please,” she prayed, and wasn’t sure what she asked.
Whatever it was, it was not granted.
Doomsday Book (1992)
Management’ll never go for it. First, it’s live-animal research, which is controversial. Management hates controversy. Second, it’s something innovative, which means Management will hate it on principle.
Bellwether (1996)
Management cares about only one thing. Paperwork. They will forgive almost anything else—cost overruns, gross incompetence, criminal indictments—as long as the paperwork’s filled out properly. And in on time.
Bellwether (1996)
And why take a chance on a new movie when they can do a sequel or a copy or a remake of something they already own? And while we are at it, why not star remakes in the remake? Hollywood, the ultimate recycler!
Remake (1994)