Vernor Vinge

"Being alone was something he was very good at. There was so much to learn."

"The essence of real creativity is a certain playfulness, a flitting from idea to idea without getting bogged down by fixated demands. Of course, you don’t always get what you thought you were asking for. From this era on, I think invention will be the parent of necessity—and not the other way around."

"Didn’t Underhill understand? All decent societies agreed on basic issues, things that meant the healthy survival of their people. Things might be changing, but it was self-serving nonsense to throw the rules overboard."

"Funny how the least attempt at deception always seems to make life more complicated."

"Yet, even with the greatest care, a technological civilization carried the seeds of its own destruction. Sooner or later, it ossified and politics carried it into a fall."

"Civilizations rise and fall, but all technical civilizations know the greatest secrets now. They know which social mechanisms normally work, and which ones quickly fail. They know the means to postpone disaster and evade the most foolish catastrophes. They know that even so, each civilization must inevitably fall."

"Pham was overwhelmed by the other things that Gunnar Larson had to say, the advice that might be worthless but that had the stench of wisdom."

"There had been an era of ubiquitous law enforcement, and some kind of distributed terror."

"There was an old Qeng Ho saying, “You know you’ve stayed too long when you start using the locals’ calendar.”"

"“Do you think she really believes what she’s saying?” “Sure she believes it. That’s what makes her so funny.”"

"There is a deepness in the sky, and it extends forever."

"This was the sort of desperate hallucination he must guard against. If you raise your desires high enough, certainty can grow out of the background noise."

"Viki was awed by all the incredible quackery. Daddy thought such things were amusing—“like religion but not so deadly.”"

"“We think the governance has opted for ubiquitous law enforcement.” Pham whistled softly. Now every embedded computing system, down to a child’s rattle, was a governance utility. It was the most extreme form of social control ever invented. “So now they have to run everything.” The notion was terribly seductive to the authoritarian mind."

"What do you do when your dream dies?"

"What do you do when your dream dies? Dreams die in every life. Everyone gets old. There is promise in the beginning when life seems so bright. The promise fades when the years get short."

"So what do you do when your dream dies? When your dream dies, you give it up."

"The hard facts are extraordinary, without adding superstitious mumbo-jumbo."

"Yes, we did quite well. But then, telling people what they want to believe is an easy job."

"The more you realized what the stars really were, the more you realized what the universe must really be."

"“But see, your theory ‘explains’ all sorts of things without helping to do anything, much less providing tests for itself.”"

"So much technology, so little talent."