"We did it with their government’s foreknowledge and permission, of course—and there were no civilian casualties, equally of course. Once they’re dead they’re rebels."

"One thing most of us agree on is that the universe exists (people who deny that usually follow some trade other than science), so if some theoretical particle interaction would lead ultimately to the nonexistence of the universe, then you can save a lot of electricity by not trying to demonstrate it."

"Maybe after the war we’ll be civilized again. That’s the way it has always happened in the past."

"In a physical way we’re closer than any civilian pair could be, since in full combat jack we are this one creature with twenty arms and legs, with ten brains, with five vaginas and five penises. Some people call the feeling godlike, and I think there have been gods who were constructed along similar lines. The one I grew up with was an old white-bearded Caucasian gent without even one vagina."

"“We’re inferring from an absence of data,” Jacque said. “That’s lousy science.”"

"CAROL: You don’t care for the music? JACQUE: Music! It’s just a gimmick to sell lutes and flutes."

"Men started to geoform the earth in the middle of the twentieth century. Unfortunately, a lot of the early work was done by people who failed to see the earth as a closed set of mutually interrelated systems."

"I never found anyone else and I don’t want anyone else. I don’t care whether you’re ninety years old or thirty. If I can’t be your lover, I’ll be your nurse."

"It was making me a little queasy. Doctors don’t seem to realize that most of us are perfectly content not having to visualize ourselves as animated bags of skin filled with obscene glop."

"I had to stifle an impulse to laugh. Surely “cowardice“ had nothing to do with his decision. Surely he had nothing so primitive and unmilitary as a will to live."

"Relativity propped it up, at least gave it the illusion of being there...the way all reality becomes illusory and observer-oriented when you study general relativity. Or Buddhism. Or get drafted."

"She hadn’t been such a bad girl before the power went to her head."

"I have always valued quiet, and the eternity of it that I face is no more dreadful than the eternity of quiet that preceded my birth."

"Big money seeks out the company of its own, for purposes of reproduction."

"“I’m a sort of literature specialist. American literature of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Usually. Most of my timespace is taken up with guys like Hemingway, Teddy Roosevelt, Heinlein, Bierce. Crane, Spillane, Twain. “William Dean Howells?” “Not him or James or Carver or Coover or Cheever or any of those guys. If everybody gave me as little trouble as William Dean Howells I could spend most of my timespace on a planet where the fishing was good.” “Masculine writers?” John said. “But not all hairy-chested macho types.” “I’ll give you an A- on that one. They’re writers who have an accumulating effect on the masculine side of the American national character. There’s no one word for it, though it is a specific thing: individualistic, competence-worshiping, short-term optimism and long-term existentialism. ‘There may be nothing after I die but I sure as hell will do the job right while I’m here, even though I’m surrounded by idiots.’ Do you see the pattern?”"

"Nothing is simple. The only thing that’s simple is that nothing is simple."

"“You do this by yourself? You’re God?” “There’s not just one of me. In fact, it would be meaningless to assign a number to us, but I guess you could say that all together, we are God…and the Devil, and the Cosmic Puppet master, and the Grand Unification Theory, the Great Pumpkin and everything else. When we consider ourselves as a group, let me see, I guess a human translation of our name would be the Spacio-Temporal Adjustment Board.”"

"A good writer remembered everything and then forgot it when he sat down to write, and reinvented it so the writing would be more real than the memory. Experience was important, but imagination was more important."

"Key West is lousy with writers, mostly poor writers, in one sense of that word or the other."

"A person who thinks he learns science from science fiction is like one who thinks he learns history from historical novels, and he deserves what he gets."

"YOU ARE VERY SUPERSTITIOUS. I HAVE FOUND THIS TO BE NOT UNCOMMON AMONG MATHEMATICIANS."

"“The problem with most people,” Samuel cut in, “isn’t that they don’t know a lot of things. Just that most of what they know is wrong.”"

"One class of crackpots felt that Harrison had betrayed humanity, giving conquering hordes of aliens a road map back to Earth. The details of what they would do to us, and why, provided an interesting refraction of the individual crackpot’s problems."

"It was full of jargon, charts and the kind of vague mathematics that social scientists admire."

"“I’ll be frank with you.” Leonard reflected that that was one of the least trust-inspiring phrases in the language."

"Any time somebody starts out a sentence with your name, Leonard thought, they’re trying to sell you something."

"“That’s an improvement?” “Who can say? But that’s revolution: throw the old set of bastards out and install your own set. At least it’ll be different.”"

"Most aliens in science fiction aren’t truly alien, and that’s not because science fiction writers lack imagination, but because the purpose of an alien in a story is usually to provide a meaningful distortion of human nature."

"Maybe war is an inevitable product of human nature. Maybe to get rid of war, we have to become something other than human."

"“You were a Jesuit?” “Franciscan. We run a close second in being pains in the ass.”"

"Nobody else in that platoon can tell a Hamiltonian from a hamburger."

"She smiled. “I wouldn’t mind. Is that a difference between men and women or between you and me?” “I think it’s a difference between you and merely sane people.”"

"Like a lot of things that everybody knows, it wasn’t true."

"It was an ideological war for some—the defenders of democracy versus the rebel strong-arm charismatic leaders. Or the capitalist land-grabbers versus the protectors of the people, take your pick."

"I’m not nearly so anxious about the lousy Communists as I am about lazy Americans."

"Page Two ..."

"Good morning Americans ..."

"Hello, Americans, This is Paul Harvey. Standby for news."

"Tomorrows forecast for Afghanistan cloudy and ten thousand degrees. September 12, 2001"

"This is the highest honor I have received since 60-some years ago, when Angel said "I do.""

"We sent men with rifles into Afghanistan and Iraq, and we kept our best weapons in their silos. Even now, we're standing there dying, daring to do nothing decisive because we've declared ourselves to be better than our terrorist enemies, more moral, more civilized. Our image is at stake, we insist. But we didn't come this far because we are made of sugar candy. Once upon a time, we elbowed our way onto and into this continent by giving smallpox-infected blankets to Native Americans. Yes, that was biological warfare. And we used every other weapon we could get our hands on, to grab this land from whomever, and we grew prosperous. And yes, we greased the skids with the sweat of slaves. And so it goes with most great nation-states, which feeling guilty about their savage pasts, eventually civilize themselves out of business, and wind up invaded and ultimately dominated by the lean, hungry, up-and-coming who are not made of sugar candy."

"In times like these, it's helpful to remember that there have always been times like these."

"Paul Harvey was the most listened to man in the history of radio. … There is no one who will ever come close to him."

"Man—despite his artistic pretensions, his sophistication, and his many accomplishments—owes his existence to a six-inch layer of topsoil and the fact that it rains."

"Shop talk ..."

"And now … over my shoulder a backward glance ..."

"Holy Shamoley ..."

"In shirt-sleeve English ..."

"Mr. President, I love you, but you're wrong."