"“Is it not the worst pain to know there is a cure for your child's illness and then not be able to obtain it? Oh it must be the one of the worst types of pain in the world.”"

"“Maybe I'm too scared to fly, but I'm brave enough to save your life.”"

"“Some of our old ways are better forgotten, but not all of them.”"

"“Funny how all things people don’t understand seem to be ‘cursed’.”"

"“Silence is the best answer to a fool.”"

"“It's ok to care about what other people think, but you should give a little more weight to what you, yourself, think...The habit of thinking is the habit of gaining strength. You're stronger than you believe.”"

"“Though I knew I shouldn’t have cared, the words still hurt like pinches, and pinches can be very painful when done in the same place many times in a row.”"

"“In that time I was able to experiment — try things, see what worked, see what didn’t — without someone looking over my shoulder, like ‘Oh my God, that really is terrible!"..."

"I don’t think about what I write and the way I write as “containers”, nor do I think about what others will see it as. I just write it. I know that I am deeply interested in post-humanism and how our pasts connect with our futures and present. I’m interested in African and Arab cultures and how they both battle and blend and I’m coming at this not as a researcher, but as a participant. I’m interested in technology and spirituality and how they blend and what happens when they blend. I think that my interests and the results of them in my stories lead to very “weird” fiction…"

"The theme of choice and the power of culture pops up in my stories often. Before Binti, the biggest example of this is in Who Fears Death when Onyesonwu must face the decision of whether or not to go through a ceremony that required cutting off her clitoris. To many readers, the fact that she even has to think about whether or not to do this is shocking. It’s not shocking to me at all, coming from the culture that I come from where the individual is often secondary to the community…"

"I believe aliens have definitely been here. I don’t think the theory that they have affected, interacted with, exchanged with the people of Earth (human and otherwise) in the past takes away from the accomplishments or innovations of anyone. I think the general belief that certain peoples are less than other peoples is what does that…"

"I’ve never heard the term “numerical synesthesia,” but now that I have, yes, this is how she often sees. This is how she is able to calm herself. This is her path to tapping into the energy of spirit. I’ve also blended it with a phenomenon that I became familiar with while playing sports. “Treeing” was when you were effortlessly performing at a level beyond yourself. It was like looking into time and space and being able to manipulate it, but if you tried to analyze it, you’d fall out of it…"

"An animal doesn’t need to develop curiosity and intelligence if it has no problems that need solving."

"Finally, in one fateful trillionth of a second, a nuclear compound was formed that had two very important properties: it was stable, and it could make a copy of itself. Life had come to the crust of the neutron star."

"They used their intelligence to control things around them, instead of letting nature and the strong-muscled have their way."

"“Inertia propulsion!” Pierre exclaimed. “On our last shift we were teaching them Newton’s law of gravity. Today they have inertia drives! Where will they be tomorrow?” “They probably will be able to control space and time and won’t have to bother with such clumsy things as black hole gravity generators and inertia drives,” Amalita replied."

"You are lucky. Very few theoretical scientists ever see their mathematical equations turned into working hardware in their lifetime."

"They are signaling to us with the neutron star equivalent of America Indian smoke signals!"

"If the computer had been a human, its eyebrows would have raised."

"The Leader of the Combined Clans, although nominally a devout worshiper of the God Bright, was willing to compartmentalize her mind and look at the pictures without being bothered by the religious overtones."

"His eye-stubs reached out toward the Eyes in an attempt to copulate with the stars."

"She normally did not pay very much attention to religion, but, as Leader of the Clan, she was automatically Chief Worshiper of Bright at holy times, and it wouldn’t do to let things be disrupted by an obviously deranged individual."

"Do you realize that when I get back from this trip two years from now I am going to be getting more in royalties from children’s books than I will in salary for being a space scientist?"

"No data is preferable to poor data."

"After a short flurry of national and international concern over the “death of the Sun,” the human race settled down to solving the insoluble problem in the best way that they knew—they ignored it and hoped it would go away."

"If you don't love life you can't enjoy an oyster"

"Innocence is in many ways ignorance."

"“But we’ve got to be quiet. Understand?” “I know how to be quiet. Even girls can do it, under pressure.”"

"A difference which makes no difference is no difference."

"“‘Different laws of physics,’” said Ariel, “and ‘supernatural’ seem synonymous to me.”"

"Change implies cause, and cause implies source. Things don’t just happen."

"You had to be a virgin to touch a unicorn... A flush crept up my neck. Okay, so I’d touched her. Being a virgin had some advantages after all. Hooray."

"Nothing’s worth living for if there aren’t things you think are worth dying for."

"Don’t go looking for adventure; you might find it."

"The end of the world turned out to be something I preferred to fantasize about rather than experience."

"I don’t think I believe Evil exists. I believe selfishness does."

"Language is a biggie, too. I utterly loathe fantasy novels in which characters stride thusly up yon hill. Walk up the damned thing, for the love of god. This Renaissance Faire lily-gilding has damaged the veracity of contemporary fantasy more than any single quality I can think of (though arguably the inability of many fantasy [and science fiction] writers to have the perspective to see how often they engage in what Freud called “projection” may be an equal culprit in the self-ghettoization of fantasy and science fiction as literary forms)."

"The Boyett Style Guide: (a) anything worth doing is worth overdoing (I can’t write a check if it isn’t in iambic pentameter); (b) anything worth saying is worth saying three times; (c) leave no literary stone unturned; (d) fill all cracks, paint all surfaces, and illuminate all dark corners; and (e) whenever two or more metaphors are suitable, use them all. I never metaphor I didn’t like."

"Tip: utopian and floral town names are inversely proportional to their hellholishness."

"Life goes on, yes, and our capacity for self-deception accompanies it."

"“The National Hot Air Museum is just down the road a piece,” he added. “Better known by its branch names: the Capitol and the White House.”"

"I am invisible, he thinks often. And Exempt. Immunity has been granted me, for I don ot lose my cool. Polarity is selected at will, for I am not ionized and I possess not valence. Call me inert and featureless but Beware, I am the Shadow, free to could men's minds. Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? I am the Dracula, look into my eye."

"How we fall into grace. You can't work or earn your way into it. You just fall. It lies below, it lies beyond. It comes to you, unbidden."

"‘I’ve been a skeptic all my life’, said Adams in his report,’ but what can you do when you see something like that ? We were both flabbergasted.’ Both pilots were slightly blinded by the glare. ‘It was the strongest blue-white light I’ve ever seen,’ said Adams."

"Two airline pilots, Adams and Anderson, were flying their D.C.3 the 130 miles from Memphis to Little Rock on the night of 31 March 1950 when a huge glowing flying saucer zoomed down at terrific speed to investigate them. On the central cupola there was a bright blue-white flashing light—either a signal or part of the propelling mechanism. And on the lower side, the airline pilots observed a row of eight or ten brilliantly lighted portholes. They thought they were portholes, but admitted that they could have been vents through which some kind of powerful energy was flowing."

"On 21 June 1947... man named Dahl was out in the Tacoma Harbour Patrol boat near Maury Island. He looked up and saw six large disks about 2,000 feet above him. Five of them were slowly circling one that seemed to be in difficulties. Slowly they sank to within 500 feet of the sea, without a sound or whisper."

"Although I quote less than two hundred incidents, these have been selected from nearly two thousand cuttings, reports, articles, manuscripts and ancient documents supplied to me by kind helpers from many countries... For the past eighteen months barely a single day has gone by without flying saucers being reported somewhere in the world... On some days there have been as many as ten different sightings in different places. And if a thing is seen daily, week after week, month after month, by ordinary people in free countries, then it follows that the thing in question must surely exist."

"I would like to devote little time to proving or disproving the reality of these wonderful flying objects... but for those who have heard of saucers only by hearsay or read of them in the popular Sunday papers that would prove a little unsatisfactory, so I shall dedicate the first part of this book to an account of what has happened up to the time of writing."