science-fiction-authors

"O cheiro de cravo, a cor de canela, eu vim de longe vim ver Gabriela."

"The heart of youth is reached through the senses; the senses of age are reached through the heart."

"At twenty, man is less a lover of woman than of women: he is more in love with the sex than with the individual, however charming she may be."

"Restif de la Bretonne undoubtedly holds a remarkable place in French literature. He was inordinately vain, of extremely relaxed morals, and perhaps not entirely sane. His books were written with haste, and their licence of subject and language renders them quite unfit for general perusal."

"A secret passion defends the heart of a woman better than her moral sense."

"The ear is the last resort of chastity: after it is expelled from the heart, it takes refuge there."

"The life of a woman is a long dissimulation. Candor, beauty, freshness, virginity, modesty — a woman has each of these but once. When lost, she must simulate them the rest of her life."

"Maurice Nicoll says all history is a living today. We are not enjoying one spark of life in a huge, dead waste. We are, instead, existing at one point "in a vast process of the living who still think and feel but are invisible to us.""

"Mortals were such fickle creatures. They called into the dark, demanded answers and attention from forces they could not comprehend, and yet when they had that attention and those answers, they complained about them.”"

""S'all right," Braun slurred. Her voiced dropped to a whisper. "My ample bosom broke my fall."

"Oh, Eliza," Wellington gasped, now remembering why he was in these lush surroundings. "No broken nose, I hope.""

"She groaned as her face turned to press against the rosewood floor. "Welly, remind me to order a better mattress for my bed. This one is far too firm.""

"Be that as it may, we were--and no doubt, still are--held under scrutiny, with that whole Phoenix Society brouhaha. It is imperative we remain on our best behaviour, a feat that you did not exactly manage effortlessly with your shenanigans in Edinburgh"

"I think you will agree the sign of a civilised society is a regular dining schedule."

"Nay, you attract mayhem, chaos, and anarchy wherever your delicate feet tread. Around you there is no such thing as a coincidence.""

"She sighed heavily before whispering, “I’m still a bit confused as to what we are waiting for.” “We are waiting for one of the constants in our world, Miss Braun,” Wellington assured her. “At the end of every opera, there is the grand finale, where the music continues its gradual crescendo, the tenor and tempo rising ever so gradually for that pinnacle of dramatic tension, that moment of anticipation—” “Welly, are you talking about opera or about sex?” His next words caught in his throat. For a woman of higher tastes and seeming refinement, this woman could be utterly crass."

""Why do you think it is always me, Director?" Eliza protested. "It could be Books. My father always told me to beware the quiet ones"

"Humans don’t like correction,” Father’s sub-routine reminded her. “Especially by our kind"

"Sometimes, people think you read their minds, but it’s just that they’re so predictable."

"I didn’t really think she was making that much sense. Or if she was, it was all ringing too true for me to want to hear it."

"It wasn’t what I’d seen and heard and tasted that night that made me mad. It was the fact that I’d seen something unspeakably evil, and yet I wasn’t as totally horrified as I should have been."

"You tear yourself down for things you could not have known or done... why punish a seed for not yet being a tree."

"....to aid even one person is to save an entire world."

"Nothing good can come of a place that refuses to see the pain of the people on whose backs it was built."

"The best way to honor them would be to take them with her toward whatever lay on the other side of that marvelous sunrise."

"I don't think you're weak for being scared. I don't think you could be as strong as you are if you weren't."

"If I asked you to catch me the moon with your bare hands, how would you do it?" she asked suddenly. Adil closed his eyes, and Karina could not stop staring at the way the gold light illuminated his dark skin. When the moon began to set, I'd wait with my hands beneath it until it sank right into them. And then I'd turn around and give it to you. He turned to his side and gave Karina a shy smile. But that's a stupid answer, isn't it?"

"The people we lose never truly leave, but that only we get to define how they stay."

"This is my mind. I am the strongest person here."

"Teach me what you know."

"Do not underestimate the strength it takes to be kind in a world as cruel as ours."

"Slaves deserve to be remembered just as much as queens."

"Life is full of cheaters [...] If you're playing fair, you're not playing to win."

"First, a story ends when it ends, and not a moment before. If you are unhappy with this ending, make a new one."

"The past devours those naive enough to forget it."

"The pain you have endured does not justify the pain you inflict on others."

"Our ship has sunk and now we try to rebuild it out of driftwood."

"Laws are meant to work, not just be kept for their own sake."

"There is no more dangerous enemy than one who despises learning."

"By all means, go up to the surface and have the run of the Zone, Doctor Marks. Pit the indefatigability of your human spirit against the planet. See how that goes for you."

"But haven’t you heard? We’re in a collapsing climate disaster. The Zone’s just one part of it. Collapsing as in, all our usable biomes crunching together as the heat pushes out from the equator. And you’ve all seen how that goes. Everything wants to live. People move north and south, animals move north and south, diseases move north and south. Waves of epidemics as all those people and animals and microbes mix in new configurations. Every year a new wave of hospitalisations from some fresh plague that’s mutating to survive the conditions we’re imposing on the world."

"MARKS: It’s not fair. MARKS: Evolution isn’t about being fair. It’s about adapting to changing circumstances."

"As an amateur historian I think it’s the same, century after century: same shit, different flies."

"I’m the expert, God help us all."

"The emergent ecologies that were recolonising the place were very light on mammals and birds. You got little ones, mostly nocturnal even when their ancestors had been diurnal. The big winners were amphibians, reptiles, bugs. Because hot and damp works for ectotherms."

"And wasn’t the planet supposed to die? Wasn’t that the deal about human-generated climate change? That the world was supposed to predecease us? I mean, that certainly seemed to be what we’d agree to. That, okay, we’d destroy everything, but that was fine just so long as the last thing to get destroyed was us. And here's all this. Flourishing. Fucking flourishing in the death zone. Heat-adapted in a way we could never be."

"Memory is fallible. Dreams overwrite the reality, fond fantasies inform the dreams."

"Aunt Charla is one of those people who take pride in not knowing about anything that’s changed in the world in the last thirty years."

"Just because I did good doesn’t mean I don’t feel bad, because the feeling bad, it’s not particularly because of anything that’s happened, it’s just the way I’m wired."

"He seemed dead, but perhaps “dead” meant something different. Perhaps it meant something less permanent."