science-fiction-authors-from-the-united-states

"You have to be rich to live forever."

"Lambs are sacrificed but rats survive."

"There was no center, no reason. Courtney’s death was random, banal viciousness inflicted by one organism upon another. There is no design. The universe isn’t kind or cruel. The universe is vast and indifferent to our desires."

"The totality of human endeavor is nothing when set against the stars."

"“You’re an atheist,” I said. “No, I believe in God. I believe God exists. I had an experience, I had that vision, and in the vision I saw God. God is a pestilent light ringed with black stars. I’m still a man of faith because I believe, but when I think of God, I think of something like a parasite.”"

"I’m not a hard man to convince. And when I see the truth, I’m the first one to admit it, even if it makes me look like a nut."

"Philosophically, Nirvana and the Final Blackout were equally unappealing to me. Reincarnation—well, it seemed like wishful thinking to me. The defining factor for my entire attitude toward an afterlife of any kind was the total absence of objective evidence."

"Miss Thompson may be off her trolley, but the others haven’t even got any tracks."

"The plans of men do not necessarily coincide with those of the Universe."

"No, I had kept an open mind about reincarnation—in spite of those people, not because of them."

"It had been one of those warm late spring days when no air moves and nothing else wants to. Not oppressively hot—just warm enough to enervate and to cause attacks of acute vernal inertia."

"The “remembered” lives had always been exciting and ended in murder, execution, or dramatic suicide. Not one of them had been a potato farmer who died quietly in his bed after seventy years of monotonous hard work. I had heard the argument that only violent personalities survived intact, but I frankly saw more late-night television than actual memory in the “past lives” I heard retold."

"I had been ready to die. In the only way I could reckon it, less than two days ago I had come to terms with the fact that I would be dead within a year. To face such a truth, to let it penetrate down to the core of your being, demands incredible effort and indescribable pain. No matter how much life you’ve had, you want more. There are things undone, words unsaid, potentials unexplored. You know you could have done more with your life, and you beg fate, or whatever god you believe in, to give you more time. You know in your heart that another entire lifetime would not be sufficient, yet you pray for just a few more years."

"Boyd looked up. “Rome,” he said in an absent fashion, “wasn’t built in a daze.”"

"Malone, meanwhile, put in two weeks sitting glumly at his Washington desk and checking reports as they arrived. They were uniformly depressing. The United States of America contained more sub-normal minds than Malone cared to think about. There seemed to be enough of them to explain the results of any election you were unhappy over."

"“I’m sure,” Malone said. “When you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” “Oh,” Blake said. After a second he added: “What does that mean?” Malone shrugged. “It’s an old saying,” he told the doctor. “It doesn’t have to mean anything. It just sounds good.” “Oh,” Blake said again."

"One of the things that had led me to be skeptical about reincarnation had been a uniform quality of silliness in the Westerners I had met who professed to “remember” past lives. The Hindu or the Buddhist of eastern Asia bears his belief with dignity. It is part of a religion. To so many Westerners, it was a topic for discussion at cocktail parties."

"In general he doesn’t know any more about magic than an ostrich knows about icebergs."

"Master Sean O’Lochlainn had always been partial to mules. “The mule,” he was fond of saying, “is as much smarter than a horse as a raven is smarter than a falcon. Neither a raven nor a mule will go charging into combat just because some human tells him to.”"

"Are you an accessory to this imbecilic tomfoolery?"

"All that was necessary was to use one’s imagination to see how it might have happened, and then check the evidence to see if it did happen that way. The final step is to check the evidence to make sure it could not have happened any other way."

"Any group which makes a claim to infallibility must be very careful not to make any mistakes, and the mistakes that will inevitably occur must be kept secret or explained away—by lies, subterfuges and distortions. And that will eventually cause the collapse of the entire edifice."

"I have always contended that the true connoisseur is to be pitied, for he has trained his taste to such perfection that he enjoys almost nothing."

"To crave power is to be ruled by madness."

"What does it matter? I asked myself. If you’re writing a fairy tale, don’t quibble over talking bears."

"There were people, Malone had always understood, who bounced out of their beds and greeted each new day with a smile. It didn’t sound possible, but then again there were some pretty strange people."

"Amidst all the hubbub, wine and beer crossed the bar in one direction, while copper and silver crossed it in the other, making everyone happy on both sides."

"“You intend to pray for answers to those questions, my lord?” “That, yes. But I have found that the best way to ask God about questions like these is to go out and dig up the data yourself.”"

"One of the troubles with the world is that so few laymen take an interest in science."

"The bad man had really committed the murders and then he tried to blame it on her. Mother killed them. That's what he said, but it was a lie. How could she kill them when she was only watching, when she couldn't even move because she had to pretend to be a stuffed figure, a harmless stuffed figure that couldn't hurt or be hurt but merely exists forever? She knew that nobody would believe the bad man, and he was dead now, too. The bad man and the bad boy were both dead, or else they were just part of the dream. And the dream had gone away for good. She was the only one left, and she was real. To be the only one, and to know that you are real—that's sanity, isn't it? But just to be on the safe side, maybe it was best to keep pretending that one was a stuffed figure. Not to move. Never to move. Just to sit here in the tiny room, forever and ever. If she sat there without moving, they wouldn't punish her. If she sat there without moving, they'd know that she was sane, sane, sane. She sat there for quite a long time, and then a fly came buzzing through the bars. It lighted on her hand. If she wanted to, she could reach out and swat the fly. But she didn't swat it. She didn't swat it, and she hoped they were watching, because that proved what sort of a person she really was. Why, she wouldn't even harm a fly...."

"Magic—that's just a label, you know. Completely meaningless. It wasn't so very long ago that people were saying that electricity was magic."

"We're all not quite as sane as we pretend to be."

"At first, when the shower curtains parted, the steam obscured the face. Then she did see it there—just a face, peering through the curtains, hanging in midair like a mask. A head-scarf concealed the hair and the glassy eyes stared inhumanly, but it wasn’t a mask, it couldn’t be. The skin had been powdered dead-white and two hectic spots of rouge centered on the cheekbones. It wasn’t a mask. It was the face of a crazy old woman. Mary started to scream, and then the curtains parted further and a hand appeared, holding a butcher’s knife. It was the knife that, a moment later, cut off her scream. And her head."

"The man who smiles when things go wrong has thought of someone he can blame it on."

"Horror is the removal of masks."

"Despite my ghoulish reputation, I really have the heart of a small boy. I keep it in a jar on my desk."

"Mothers sometimes are overly possessive, but not all children allow themselves to be possessed."

"I think perhaps all of us go a little crazy at times."

"That’s the way girls were—they always laughed. Because they were bitches."

"I haven't had this much fun since the rats ate my baby sister."

"Matheson gets closer to his characters than anyone else in the field of fantasy today. ... You don’t read a Matheson story — you experience it."

"Funny...how we take it for granted that we know all there is to know about another person, just because we see them frequently or because of some strong emotional tie."

"The desire to rule, to dictate, is born of nothing but contempt."

"This look into the far future has lightened my heart. Simply to know that there is a future is somehow reassuring."

"“You’ve been planning moves in advance.” “As necessary in life as in chess.”"

"The silence was deep, yet it was the sort of restful, contemplative silence befitting and peculiar to a library."

"The truth lay on him like the rubble of a landslide."

"“Deems, this new pastime of yours may prove your undoing.” “Eh?” “Thinking. You’ve done so little of it in your life. This much exertion all at once…Well, it can’t be healthy.”"

"Things are going to change around here. I realize that taboos are hard to overcome, but it simply has to be done if your people are going to have any future."

"Chico’s was busy that night, the dance floor a scrummage of writhing humanity. Snowclaw couldn’t get over the noise in the place. It had taken some getting used to. He didn’t quite understand what all the thumping and screeching was about, though he knew it had something to do with music. And the dancing was completely incomprehensible. Snowy took it to be some complex courting ritual. But what did the flashing lights have to do with anything?"