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Quotes from Four Hundred Billion Stars — Paul J. McAuley

born 1955 England

← All quotes by Paul J. McAuley

8 quotes

We wish not to be alone in the universe, Dorthy, and this drives people to invent things that are not really there.

Four Hundred Billion Stars (1988)

Stay the same and after a while you come to think that nothing will ever change.

Four Hundred Billion Stars (1988)

“We must remember that they are alien.”
“That’s hardly a basis for speculation now. It explains everything and nothing.”

Four Hundred Billion Stars (1988)

Things are simply what they are, neither good nor bad. The potential for evil is not in our stars, but in ourselves.

Four Hundred Billion Stars (1988)

It was both true, and not the complete truth, like so much of his talk.

Four Hundred Billion Stars (1988)

“I didn’t know that you were into politics.”
“Anyone with money has to be. Real money, I mean. Even criminals need to keep a politician in their pockets these days.”

Four Hundred Billion Stars (1988)

Many people were bitterly puzzled that the first truly intelligent aliens to be found should be so immediately, unremittingly hostile, but the astronomers shrugged it off. The universe was at best a marginal place for life.

Four Hundred Billion Stars (1988)

Zithsa hunter claim they sometimes see man-shaped creatures in the lowlands. Mist demons, the hunters call them, and say that they are the ghosts of the fabled lost race. I say they are half vodka, half imagination.

Four Hundred Billion Stars (1988)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Paul J. McAuley (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.