45 quotes
Most people think the world is out to get them, because they have all the evidence they need—they don’t get enough of what they want. But that doesn’t make it so.
Mother of Storms (1994)
Brains don’t exactly run in that family—they sort of dribble slowly away.
Orbital Resonance (1991)
Once I’m dead, I can afford to be patient.
Mother of Storms (1994)
Don’t get mad, and don’t waste time getting even.
Get ahead.
Mother of Storms (1994)
It’s a long step down the road to paranoia, but it’s been a proverb for a hundred years that being paranoid does not mean that they aren’t out to get you.
Mother of Storms (1994)
He wasn’t as dumb as I thought, I realized—just not interested in the same things I was.
Orbital Resonance (1991)
The drive to see what’s over the next hill is in part the fear that one may never know, that if one doesn’t go over the hill today, one may never get farther than the village graveyard.
Mother of Storms (1994)
Yeats fussed about things falling apart and the center not being able to hold. What really happened was that the center ceased to exist altogether.
Mother of Storms (1994)
Writing about yourself is addictive. I hope all you kids noticed that. If you feel like autobiography, try heroin. Lots safer and easier to control…
Orbital Resonance (1991)
He’s stunned numb when she takes his hand and says, “Let’s give it a try. I’ve been thinking maybe I don’t bend enough or try to see anyone else’s point of view.”
Mother of Storms (1994)
Philosophic clarity has been a key to his life in business, and he doesn’t fall for facile or self-flattering descriptions—not even, usually, for the self-flattery of thinking he is immune to self-flattery.
Mother of Storms (1994)
The more rules you impose on a creative intelligence, of course, the fewer problems it can solve.
Swift as a Dream and Fleeting as a Sigh (2012)
Human beings always say they prefer peace, but it takes a saint to talk us into not assaulting our neighbors.
Earth Made of Glass (1998)
Playing with pointers is like playing with fire. Fire is perhaps the most important tool known to man. Carefully used, fire brings enormous benefits; but when fire gets out of control, disaster strikes.
It's a good idea for diplomats to keep their word in small matters. It makes the later complete betrayals more of a surprise.
Earth Made of Glass (1998)
Shan had always said that in any multiple choice about human motivation, the real answer was always "all of the above."
Earth Made of Glass (1998)
People who put principles before people are people who hate people. They won’t much care about how well it works, just about how right it is…they may even like it better if it inflicts enough pain.
A Million Open Doors (1992)
He’s always known the real way to money is not through production but through control; “The hotel owner gets rich owning the keys, the maids stay poor keeping the toilets clean,” as one of his biz profs back at Madison used to say.
Mother of Storms (1994)
Because the oxymoron introduces an unresolvable contradiction, it poses a problem in logic but not necessarily in tropics. If the desirable oxymoron is a representation, it can be dialectically resolved into two aspects of some greater truth.
If you want to learn a culture, you have to learn how to like what it likes, rather than go looking for something that you like.
Earth Made of Glass (1998)