58 quotes
I sometimes think we deserve to die, we’re all so goddamned stupid.
The Forge of God (1987)
Altruism is masked self-interest. Aggressive self-interest is a masked urge to self-destruction.
The Forge of God (1987)
Grief is not productive. It simply represents an inefficiency in accepting change of status.
Eon (1985)
To fight an enemy properly, you have to know what they are. Ignorance is defeat.
Hardfought (1983)
Eccentricity is more than affectation to a poet. It’s a necessity.
Queen of Angels (1990)
Can’t own a woman, Mike. Wonderful companions, can’t own them.
Blood Music (1985)
When evenly matched, you cannot win against your enemy unless you understand them. And if you truly understand, why are you fighting and not talking?
Hardfought (1983)
Sometimes I feel like a beetle crawling through a fusion power plant. I can feel a certain amount, see a certain amount, but I sure as hell don’t understand everything.
Eon (1985)
He wondered for a moment if they had stumbled onto something truly supernatural but dismissed that with a disgusted shudder.
Queen of Angels (1990)
Information can be stored even more compactly than in molecular memory. It can be stored in the structure of space-time. What is matter, after all, but a standing-wave of information in the vacuum?
Blood Music (1985)
We’ve been fighting for so long, we’ve begun to lose ourselves. And it’s getting worse.
Hardfought (1983)
Equal in law is not equal in nature.
Moving Mars (1993)
The battle was over. There were no victors.
Hardfought (1983)
Here was a creed without a coherent philosophy—a system without a sensible metaphysic. Here was puerile hypothesis and even outright fantasy masquerading as revealed the truth.
Heads (1990)
All states resort to force in the end.
Moving Mars (1993)
Ours is an age of social anger.
Queen of Angels (1990)
“From what we’ve been told, he wasn’t very humble, was he, Mr. Lascal?”
Lascal shook his head. “I don’t know many writers who are.”
Queen of Angels (1990)
Nothing will ever be the same again.
Good! Wonderful! Wasn’t it all badly flawed anyway?
No, perhaps not. Not until now.
Blood Music (1985)
I felt myself growing older. I didn’t see it as an improvement.
Heads (1990)
There is nothing finer in the world than the telling of tales. Split atoms if you wish, but splitting an infinitive—and getting away with it—is far nobler. Lance boils if you wish, but pricking pretensions is often cleaner and always more fun.
The White Horse Child (1979)