All Quotes

"Yani seemed a time-traveler who had found out the hard way that he did not like his destination any better than his point of departure, failed to notice the one common factor was himself, and now could not go back."

"Misplaced paranoia could be as great a mistake as misplaced faith."

"He supposed he shouldn’t think of it as Quick work, my Lord Auditor, from foreplay to coitus in one afternoon. But who was being screwed? And why, why, why was he being bribed?"

"“Old age,” she said, “is slower than a grenade, but a lot more thorough.”"

"He didn’t exactly have a plan, yet. More of a stab in the dark. He still wasn’t sure what his blade would connect with…"

"All the worry people expend over not existing after they die, yet nary a one ever seems to spare a moment to worry about not having existed before they were conceived. Or at all. After all, one sperm over and we would have been our sisters, and we’d never have been missed."

"His mystery, it seemed, had just split into two. Mystery mitosis. It seemed a retrograde sort of progress."

"He’d underestimated how much work normal healthy children would take, even with all the help his money and position could buy. For there were some tasks you didn’t want to delegate, because then you’d be missing the best parts."

"History does not so much repeat as echo, I suppose."

"“Never underestimate the human capacity for wishful thinking and willful blindness,” said Miles. Such as a whole society of people who became so wrapped up in avoiding death, they forgot to be alive?"

"She considered seventy-six. It…made no sense. Except that sometime in the past three years, she had switched from counting her years not up from birth, but back from death—a grab-bag of time not growing, but shrinking, use it or lose it."

"So what do you want? Really want, not just think is most prudent. Or worse, think is what I want."

"If nothing else, the arrival of actual children replaces theory with practice. And time to fret with…lack of time to breathe, sometimes."

"A contractor, early? Really? Already your tale begins to resemble some drunken hallucination."

"I admit, when I picture the scenario, I keep seeing a boy of about, oh, seven. Age of reason and all that. One I could talk to, and do things with. I’m not sure how you get from the single-cell stage to that one, though."

"Babies are just a challenge. Teenagers are a nightmare."

"It only takes one nutcase to decide that you, not he, are the reason his life sucks, and set out to even the score. Nutcases are not in short supply here."

"I don’t see people, young or otherwise, as having a right to be idiots. It’s just impractical to try to stop them, unless they’re hurting somebody, and this sport—extreme art?—does not appear to be lethal."

"No, do not let your fears eat the happiness in front of you. Or your grief consume your future? That was harder."

"There’s a paradox for you. Although really it’s no more than saying that I’m satisfied with my life. Changing anything would wish people I’ve loved out of existence, and yet…there would have been other people, I suppose. Who now will never be."

"“We used to call the biowar intelligence and analysis section at ImpSec HQ the Nightmare Barn,” Miles reminisced. “In a large building full of pale, overcaffeinated men, they had a reputation as being the pastiest and the twitchiest.”"

"“Everybody has it wrong way round. Parents don’t make children—children make parents. They shape our behavior from the first wail. Mold us into what they need. It can be a pretty rough process, too.” Jole’s eyebrows went up. “I’d not thought of it that way.” It seemed a strangely hopeful notion. “Well, believe it. Though my whole life has been on-the-job training—I don’t know why I thought this should be any different.”"

"By far the most dangerous animal on the planet was an invasive species of ape."

"Alas, she was dealing with management, not the engineers."

"One of the best things about writing is how it redeems, not to mention recycles, all of one's prior experiences, including — or perhaps especially — the failures."

"I have a catchphrase to describe my plot-generation technique — "What's the worst possible thing I can do to these people?""

"I am increasingly convinced that technological culture is the entire root of women's liberation."

"Parallels, spirals, and reflections are some of my favorite literary patterns."

"Reading is an active and elusive experience. Every reader, reading exactly the same text, will have a slightly different reading experience depending on what s/he projects into the words s/he sees, what strings of meaning and association those words call up in his/her (always) private mind. One can never therefore, talk about the quality of a book separately from the quality of the mind that is creating it by reading it, in the only place books live, in the secret mind."

"I have no idea why some of my books draw awards and others don't, except that the ones I spent the least time worrying about other people's response to — that I wrote for myself — seem to do the best of all."

"Not all books are created equal, and for the special ones, you begin to know it sometimes even before the work is finished, but always by the time you slam that last line home and shriek, "Done! Done!," and fall head-down across your keyboard like the runner from Marathon."

"I've always tried to write the kind of book I most loved to read: character-centered adventure."

"I attack both from the logic-side, scribbling outline after outline, and the long-walk relaxed-visualization-side, and while neither alone is enough, the combination synergizes. Which is just a fancy way of saying, "I think about it a lot, day and night.""

"From fried witchetty grubs to gold-plated turnips, when you're a writer you never know what's going to appear on your plate next. It keeps a woman alert, it does."

"If you desire a man to tell you comfortable lies about your prowess, and so fetter any hope of true excellence, I'm sure you may find one anywhere. Not all prisons are made of iron bars. Some are made of feather beds."

"Right or wrong, what I also saw was that you made an enemy, and left him alive behind you. Great charity. Bad tactics."

"The joys of command — well, you know. You taught them to me. One part glory to ten parts shoveling manure."

"The gods' most savage curses come upon us as answers to our own prayers, you know."

"But have you really understood how powerless the gods are, when the lowest slave may exclude them from his heart? And if from his heart, then from the world as well, for the gods may not reach in except through living souls. If the gods could seize passage from anyone they wished, then men would be mere puppets. Only if they borrow or are given will from a willing creature, do they have a little channel through which to act."

"Military intelligence was as nothing to military stupidity."

"Sociopath therapy was invented for people like him. No, no. The last person he wants for a character witness is someone who weeks him."

"I’m not responsible for my weird ancestors. Quite the reverse. Exactly the inverse."

"It just happens to be very important to me to win with the hand I was dealt."

"“You have the instincts of a gentleman, Ivan,” said Miles, absorbed in breaking into the coded files. “How did you ever get into security?"

"Some people would rather drown our domes in blood than learn anything from history. Or learn anything at all."

"He seems to have this strange difficulty grasping that I actually mean what I say."

"The will to be stupid is a very powerful force—"

"So. This one has never struck a man for real before. Nor killed either, I wager. Oh, little virgin, are you ever in for a bloody deflowering."

"“Power is safety.” “Let me give you a hint,” said Miles. “There is no safety. Only varying states of risk. And failure.”"

"You are what you do. Choose again, and change."