Hugo Award Winners

"“Would you like to talk?” “When I dream, I am talking.” “But to yourself.” “Who knows me better?” He laughed softly. “And who can deceive you better,” she said a little tartly."

"Dreams haunted The Riverworld."

"Actually, the situation was intolerable. But then it was surprising how much intolerableness a man could tolerate."

"Styles was an old Mississippi pilot, a handsome youth, no liar, though given to inflating facts."

"He was stiff and sometimes a little strange, which was what you’d expect from an engineer, but he had a moral backbone as inflexible as a fossilized dinosaur’s."

"I ought to arrest your assertions for vagrancy. They certainly are without any visible support."

"His thinking wasn’t logical. But whatever the philosophers claimed, the main use of logic was to justify your emotions."

"Actors didn’t have to be politicians, but politicians had to be actors."

"It was not that he was unintelligent. It was just that he was not emotionally able to comprehend democracy."

"“It’s a nice toy and makes a lot of noise and looks impressive and will kill a man. But it’s wasteful and inefficient.” “You make it sound like a congressman,” Sam said."

"Where this area had been beautiful with its many trees and bright grass and the colored blooms of the vines that covered the trees, it was now like a battlefield. It had been necessary to create ugliness to build a beautiful boat."

"But we may not be able to climb high enough. Look at those mountains. They go straight up, smooth as a politician denying he ever made a campaign promise."

"Of course, I’m only indulging in mankind’s vice of trying to make a symbol out of coincidence."

"A miracle: a chance distribution of events, occurring one time in a billion."

"Resurrection, like politics, makes strange bedfellows."

"Burton sighed, laughed loudly, and said, “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.” Another fairy tale to give men hope. The old religions have been discredited — although some refuse to face even that fact — so new ones must be invented.”"

"Burton, though an infidel, made it his business to investigate thoroughly every religion. Know a man’s faith, and you knew at least half the man. Know his wife, and you knew the other half."

"Burton did not believe in miracles. Nothing happened that could not be explained by physical principles — if you knew all the facts."

"“I did it!” she said. “I...I! I wanted to! Oh, what a vile low whore I am!” “I don’t remember offering you any money.”"

"All the human beings I met were either sure that there would be no afterlife or else that they would get preferential treatment in the hereafter."

"The aerial canoe had no visible means of support, he thought, and it was a measure of his terror that he did not even think about his pun. No visible means of support. Like a magical vessel out of The Thousand and One Nights."

"In a frenzy, kicking his legs and moving his arms in a swimmer's breaststroke, he managed to fight toward the rod. The closer he got to it, the stronger the web of force became. He did not give up. If he did, he would be back where he had been and without enough strength to begin fighting again. It was not his nature to give up until all his strength had been expended."

"It was like no hell or heaven of which he had ever heard or read, and he had thought that he was acquainted with every theory of the afterlife. He had died. Now he was alive. He had scoffed all his life at a life-after-death. For once, he could not deny that he had been wrong. But there was no one present to say, "I told you so, you damned infidel!" Of all the millions, he alone was awake."

"The world took a shape which he could grasp, though he could not comprehend it. Above him, on both sides, below him, as far as he could see, bodies floated. They were arranged in vertical and horizontal rows. The up-and-down ranks were separated by red rods, slender as broomsticks, one of which was twelve inches from the feet of the sleepers and the other twelve inches from their heads. Each body was spaced about six feet from the body above and below and on each side. The rods came up from an abyss without bottom and soared into an abyss without ceiling. That grayness into which the rods and the bodies, up and down, right and left, disappeared was neither the sky nor the earth. There was nothing in the distance except the lackluster of infinity."

"Death, the Destroyer of Delights and the Sunderer of Society, had arrived at last. Blackness. Nothingness. He did not even know that his heart had given out forever. Nothingness. Then his eyes opened. His heart was beating strongly. He was strong, very strong! All the pain of the gout in his feet, the agony in his liver, the torture in his heart, all were gone. It was so quiet he could hear the blood moving in his head. He was alone in a world of soundlessness. A bright light of equal intensity was everywhere. He could see, yet he did not understand what he was seeing. What were these things above, beside, below him? Where was he?"

"His wife had held him in her arms as if she could keep death away from him. He had cried out, "My God, I am a dead man!""

"Strong blasphemers thrive only when strong believers thrive."

"Yesterday's monomaniac is tomorrow's messiah…"

"Zeitgeist rides tonight, and the devil take the hindmost!"

"And there is another feeling, one which he shares with most of humankind. He knows he's screwed up his life, or something has twisted it. Every thinking man and woman knows this. Even the smug and dimwitted realize this unconsciously. But a baby, that beautiful being, that unsmirched blank tablet, unformed [[angel], represents a new hope. Perhaps it won't screw up. Perhaps it'll grow up to be a healthy confident reasonable good-humored unselfish loving man or woman. 'It won't be like me or my next-door neighbor,' the proud, but apprehensive, parent swears."

"God, Whose hand holds stars, as we lump earth In our fingers, give us power, give us light To hold all love within our breast's small space."

"Yes, we hope to seed a new, rich earth. We hope to breed a race of men whose power Dwells in hearts as open as all Space Itself, who ask for nothing but the light That rinses the heart of hate so that the stars Above will be below when man has Love."

"Now we have lit a candle to the power Of atoms; now we know we're heirs of light Itself..."

"Eyes forward! Sing a paean to the light That God gives us to net the distant stars In eyes that once were blinded with black earth. Man had no time for aught but toll, no space For aught but war. Yet God, in His great love, Has cleared our eyes and given a hint of Power."

"My first published novel was written for teenagers, and there were rules laid down by the publisher: no sex, no smoking, no swearing. I blew up entire solar systems, I consigned billions of people to horrible death; they didn't seem to mind that at all. But no hanky-panky."

"Even snaky little Vyborg chatted happily with a few of the glowing-eyed young women that clustered about him, Eberly noted. Power goes to some people’s heads; in other people, power goes straight to the groin."

"“Wake up in there!” Fritz hollered. “I’m awake,” said Gaeta. “These days you spend too much time in bed and not enough time sleeping.”"

"He’s so doggone narrow-minded he could look through a keyhole with both eyes."

"“A teacher?” Vyborg gasped. “They got rid of him in Mexico because he was teaching unauthorized garbage. Do you want him teaching his blasphemies here?” Berkowitz’s smile diminished by less than a millimeter. “Freedom of thought is not blasphemous, Sammi. He’s a great teacher.”"

"“The real problem,” Eberly burst out, “is that these regulations were written by people who live in a world that must be tightly controlled. They all share the same basic, underlying view that society must be hierarchical and controlled from the top.” Wilmot felt pleased that the discussion was moving into his field of interest. “Aren’t all societies controlled from the top? Even so-called democracies are ruled by a small elite group; the only difference is that a democracy can shift its elite without bloodshed and give the general populace the illusion that they have made a telling change.”"

"Your job is not to die for your country. Your job is to get the other poor sonofabitch to die for his country."

"If astronomy has taught man anything it is the painful fact that we are not special creatures in any sense of the term. Our star is an average one, and the conditions that led to the formation of our planet and ourselves were probably not very extraordinary."

"Consider the history of the earth. Let the height of the Empire State Building represent the planet’s five billion years of existence. Man's one-million-year tenure on earth can then be represented by a one-foot ruler, standing at the very top of the building. A dime placed at the top of the ruler represents the entire span of man's civilization. And, at the very top of the whole wobbly conglomerate, is glued a postage stamp —this represents the length of time since man has developed modern science."

"I think it's perfectly OK to exploit the moon. Largely for two reasons: there's no life there, and it is close enough and rich enough in resources to be economically useful to Earth. In the final analysis, everything we do in space, if it does not help the people of Earth, all the people, it's not going to happen."

"I don't take stuff seriously. I saw 'Hellraiser 3' the other day at Cannes; it's OK, it's a good film, I didn't hate it or anything. I thought it was quite good, but it was all just so serious. Some guy walking round with pins sticking out of his face. I just can't sit there and think ,'this is really scary.' If I made a 'Hellraiser' film, I'd like Pinhead to be whacked against a wall and have all the pins flattened into his face."

"I regard myself as an entertainer much more than an artist."

"Remember, pain is temporary; film is forever."

"I'm a Derek and Dereks don't run"

"Kong bites his head off in a PG13 kinda way"

"And so I look back on not just the last ten years but everything that I've done as being sort of an ongoing growing continual film school. I mean I don't think I've got to a point where I've achieved anything that feels like, a particular milestone, but there's still a lot more to learn and hopefully a lot more films to make."