254 quotes
Occasionally, I will do a conspicuous miracle to save one dying child while a thousand children starve elsewhere. This will convince sensible people I am perverse, and they will curse my name. Be sure to recruit those who do, they'll be invaluable.
The Visitor (2002)
“Show yourselves,” cried Stephon. “Only cowards hide in the dark.”
“Cowards do many things,” said the voice. “Cowards kill their Commanders and make it look like a bandit attack. Cowards plot in secret. Cowards breed insurrection. Cowards plan the abuse of women.”
The Gate to Women's Country (1988)
No one ever has to believe! The universe is, it does not require belief. Do you think it will stop existing if you do not believe? Do you think far galaxies will harbor resentment against you if you do not believe? Do you resent the ant who does not look up and admire you? Never!
Singer from the Sea (1999)
There is no fucking in Hades.
The Gate to Women's Country (1988)
One of the strangest things I have encountered on your world, dear Benita, is that many of your people have no idea who they really are but many ridiculous ideas about what they are expected to be, plus many religious convictions about what they should be, although nobody is! One should not want to be anything but what one is because it creates unhappiness.
The Fresco (2000)
You’ve been too long in the nursery, boy. Too long with lads and dreamers and cooks. Come out, come out wherever you are! The cock crows morning, and the Great Game is toward! Play it or be swept from the board.
King's Blood Four (1983)
“Punishment is not my business,” said Questioner. “As I have said to others, it never works anyhow. Putting right is my business.
Unfortunately, when things are put right, often the innocent suffer with the guilty.”
Six Moon Dance (1998)
“I think he is a wicked man.”
Sam said doggedly, “Are you so sure he is wicked, Lilla? Perhaps, away from here, he might change.”
“We Gharm have a saying. Perhaps, away from the pond, the frog would grow feathers.”
Raising the Stones (1990)
Questioner I was melted down in the cataclysm known as the Flagian Miscalculation, somewhere out near the Bonfires of Hell. The Flagians’ attempt to prove that matter was illusory succeeded only in redistributing that matter rather widely.
Six Moon Dance (1998)
“Go to the simul and slap people around, kill people, that’s what you want. Do it! But you can’t do it out here!”
It sounded great, but nobody stayed dead in a simul! How could you get any satisfaction killing somebody who didn’t stay dead?
Shadow's End (1994)
“You would advise us not to worry?”
“Oh, worry by all means,” said Windlow. “By all means. Yes. It sharpens the wits. A good worry does wonders for the defensive capabilities of the brain. However, I should not advise you to do without sleep.”
King's Blood Four (1983)
There was a great mob of the Oracle’s Brotherhood, dancing in their ribbons, chanting and shouting in a zealot’s parody of purpose, a frantic anarchy that could see no farther than the next bit of inflammatory oratory being shouted on every corner.
Jinian Star-Eye (1986)
Mankind had always had a propensity for trying to govern the ungovernable and to control what was uncontrollable. Mankind had always relied upon laws and rules to direct those drives that did not care about laws or rules. Pragmatism had at last prevailed.
Six Moon Dance (1998)
Learning more was merely ordinary to me, but traveling—that was a wonderful treat.
At least so I thought until we had done some of it. Then it turned out that traveling was doing everything one had to do at home with none of the conveniences for doing it.
Jinian Footseer (1985)
Other such interpretations were used to order the dress of the High Baidee, which included such items as the zettle, a small scarf of precious material hung from the belt, on one side of which were embroidered the words “Stuff happens,” and on the other “Not guilty.”
Raising the Stones (1990)
This is the problem with too much Schooling. One learns to manipulate the labels in a way that the Gamesmistresses approve, and one doesn’t realize that things do not always act in accordance with the labels in the real world. One doesn’t realize that the labels, come to that, are often wrong.
Dervish Daughter (1986)
That symbol always reminded me of that historic educational effort called “No child left behind,” which actually meant “No child gets ahead,” for compliance meant dumbing everything down so no one would learn more than the least capable. “Enough for all” really meant “Too little for everybody.”
The Margarets (2007)
She had grown through loss and confusion into a girl who lived almost entirely inside her head, taking refuge in the places she created there, not so much repulsed by others’ reality as unable to perceive it.
The Visitor (2002)
I mentioned that the small god said she brought the asteroid because of what man had become, and they retorted that man might not have become that if we had been relentless in our education of our young people and had not perpetuated ignorance under the guise of cultural sensitivity and the politically correct.
The Visitor (2002)
Conflict acting on intelligence creates imagination. Faced with conflict, creatures are forced to imagine what will happen, where the next threat will come from. If there has never been conflict, imagination never develops. Wits arise in answer to danger, to pain, to tragedy. No one ever got smarter eating easy apples.
Six Moon Dance (1998)