"There is nothing more alien to a modern American than yesterday’s empires, with their arbitrary imperial powers, their cruelty, and their casual control over life and death."

"He realized a profound truth: there is no one so generous as a bureaucrat spending other people’s money."

"Somehow he felt more resigned than surprised. Things had been going far too well for far too long. Just when you thought you had the universe by the tail, it turned round and bit you on the ass."

"Happy endings were for children’s stories and fool. You live in misery, and then you die. Life, by definition, was not designed to end happily. Louis continued aft. No happy ending, then. That was a fact, certain as death itself. He was living at the moment in a dream, an imagined world where everything went right. But—dreams are real while they last. Could you say more of life? A dream sequence was no more than a happy interlude, but maybe a happy interlude could last for an awful long time."

"One form of insanity bears the name curiosity."

"Nothing in life produce a more powerful joy than a near miss by the Angel of Death."

"When a person was so consistently wrong, it was time to give up having opinions."

"Logic was good, but too much logical analysis inhibited action. Darya had heard it seriously suggested that the original human cladeworld, Earth, had degenerated to an ineffectual backwater of a planet because computer trade-off analysis had increasingly been used as the basis for decision making. On purely logical grounds, no one would ever explore, invent, rejoice, sing, strive, fall in love, or take physical and psychological risks of any kind. Better to stay in bed in the morning; it was much safer."

"His mind was as furiously active as his hormones."

"Improbable as it seems, I think she admires you more than me."

"I learned a long time ago that it’s a bad habit to waste effort counting your friends. It’s your enemies you need to look out for."

"It was improbable for him to meet his old friends here? Fine, so it was improbable; but it had happened. “Improbable” was something you could only apply to future events."

"Decisions based on incomplete information are one thing, a fact of political life. Decisions made with no information are another."

"“Any other instructions?” “Not without breaking one of my own golden rules. In an unpredictable situation, the man or woman on the spot should make the decisions, not the general sitting on his ass a million miles away from the action.”"

"Forrest Singer, it always seemed to Saul, spoke as though the two of them were equals. Saul possibly held the slightly inferior position in the doctor’s eyes. Saul was the President of the United States, true; but Forrest Singer was an M.D."

"A thousand friends have less weight than a single enemy."

"The more foolproof you think something is, the worse the failure when it happens."

"Do you see what I mean about evolution? Waldo exhibited none of the usual survival traits. Oh, well, perhaps a certain blind persistence. But as usual, he landed on his feet. He always does. It convinces me to the main genetic selection criterion these days is not skill, intelligence, or any of the usual virtues. It’s entertainment value. Have that, and everything else will come to you."

"Telepathy? It’s bunk, Tolly. Now, if you’d asked me that forty years ago, I’d have said it was the most exciting thing in the world. Back when Rhine started his work, I thought there was really something there. Since then, it’s gone nowhere. Christ, there’s been any amount of talk, lots of horseshit, no real evidence, and nothing for progress. So now, I say it’s bunk—or else we’ve been going about it all wrong."

"When you pay somebody off, it only increases their demands. I know, only too well. They are never satisfied with what they get."

"Alexandria may indeed be full of Devils, Lord, but they behaved very like merchants to my eyes."

"The trouble with apocalyptic visions is that they often won’t withstand a rational examination."

"Irresponsible on my part, to put pleasure before professional work? Sure—but as I get older carpe diem gets more and more reasonable as a motto for life."

"Not one word of what I’d said had got through to him. It didn’t much matter, I’d really been speaking for the media anyway, but it was a shame to see bigotry masquerading as public-spirited behavior."

"Life’s not chess, and life’s not poker, but there’s some of both in it."

"There was one good argument against cloning, and only one. It increased the total number of people, and to me that number already felt far too large."

"Maybe Redman meant well when he set up the church, but you can never create a good society based on deception. It’s been tried before, and it always fails. The trouble is, people won’t learn from history."

"“Captain Roker, I don’t like your insinuation,” he said. “McAndrew is a physicist—so am I. You may not be smart enough to realize it, but physics is a field of study, not a surgical operation. Castration isn’t part of the Ph.D. Exams, you know.”"

"“D’you know what homeostasis is?” “I used to, before I rotted my brain with politics.”"

"As usual he looked tired, but that was normal. Geniuses worked harder than anyone else, not less hard."

"Everyone was polite; no one was happy."

"“But remember, it was all hearsay.” “In Washington, hearsay’s the same as gospel truth.”"

"Right decision or wrong decision, it was a leader’s job to make it."

"The heirs, naturally, wanted everything to be theirs as soon as possible. No one is more rapacious, ruthless, and impatient than a loving family member."

"What purpose and will didn’t tell you, unfortunately, was how to do something that must be done."

"“They survive.” “Ah yes, survive. And achieve nothing to deserve it.” “The only meaning of life, if it can be said to have meaning, is to survive. My brothers and sisters, herding their children on the plains, find meaning in the simple pattern of their lives and need nothing more. They are immersed in the processes of the world: all is one. That is their religion. They seek no other meaning. “Your race, now, believes that expansion is all. You think to outrace your dark destiny, believe that the whole universe is yours when you understand so little of it.”"

"Stay the same and after a while you come to think that nothing will ever change."

"It was both true, and not the complete truth, like so much of his talk."

"“And now you have had to alter your theory.” ”Well,” Andrews said, smiling, “that’s science.”"

"“I didn’t know that you were into politics.” “Anyone with money has to be. Real money, I mean. Even criminals need to keep a politician in their pockets these days.”"

"“We must remember that they are alien.” “That’s hardly a basis for speculation now. It explains everything and nothing.”"

"Things are simply what they are, neither good nor bad. The potential for evil is not in our stars, but in ourselves."

"“They’re following one bunch of herders. Marta has this idea that she can work out their social behavior.” “And do they have any?” Dorthy asked. “Fucking mostly,” Andrew said evenly. The boss female controls the group by choosing which males fuck her, and the males fuck each other, too, to establish their dominance. Rather like the Navy.”"

"You can’t hate change. It’s like hating life."

"Many people were bitterly puzzled that the first truly intelligent aliens to be found should be so immediately, unremittingly hostile, but the astronomers shrugged it off. The universe was at best a marginal place for life."

"Zithsa hunter claim they sometimes see man-shaped creatures in the lowlands. Mist demons, the hunters call them, and say that they are the ghosts of the fabled lost race. I say they are half vodka, half imagination."

"We wish not to be alone in the universe, Dorthy, and this drives people to invent things that are not really there."

"“I read in some of it (the reference is to Shakespeare). It’s not so bad when you get used to it, pretty archaic though. Why do you like old stuff like this?” “It has everything in it, if you look hard enough,” Dorthy said, taking the sheaf. “Love, jealousy, avarice, loyalty, murder, madness...I find it reassuring that human nature is so constant.”"

"Hodgson also promised “certain thrills, merely taking the story as a story,” and even the most purely sensation-seeking reader would be hard put to deny that he accomplished that. Generic critics may quibble about whether The House on the Borderland belongs more properly to the sphere of visionary fantasy than to that of supernatural horror — or even to science fiction, given the astronomical details that accompany the space-time visions — but few would deny that the novel stands as a remarkable imaginative feat."

"Despite a tendency toward conventionally sentimental conceptions of the universe, and of man’s relation to it and to his fellows, Mr. Hodgson is perhaps second only to Algernon Blackwood in his serious treatment of unreality. Few can equal him in adumbrating the nearness of nameless forces and monstrous besieging entities through casual hints and significant details, or in conveying feelings of the spectral and the abnormal in connexion with regions or buildings."