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Not only can you not step into the same river twice; it is not even the same you who can’t step into the same river twice. Everything modifies everything. There is no niche in the past waiting for him to come back and occupy it. Nature will tolerate a paradox, but she abhors a vacuum.

— Robert Sheckley The Robot Who Looked Like Me (1978)

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More quotes by Robert Sheckley

Outside the curtained windows, Paris stewed in its miasma of self-congratulation and diesel fumes.

Hunter/Victim (1988)

How does the fool build his paradise?—out of the crumbling bricks of illusion and the watery cement of hope.

The Game of X (1965)

Man is the only animal whose fear of embarrassment can overcome his instinct for self-preservation.

The Game of X (1965)

Still, no matter how commonplace, one’s death is the most interesting event of one’s life.

Immortality, Inc (1959)

Nobody says any longer, “When will the killing stop?” Now we know that the killing will stop only when life itself stops.

Victim Prime (1987)

All Robert Sheckley quotes →

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Robert Sheckley (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.