Quotes by Science Fiction Authors

At least as coherent as the Gettysburg Address backwards in Albanian, anyway.

Kiss me, and you'll live forever. You'll be a frog, but you'll live forever.

To enter the past is like poking a baseball bat into a spiderweb: it can't be done subtly or delicately.

He met me at the airport; it was ten in the morning, Washington time, when I arrived, after having taken a plane that left Los Angeles International at 10:10 A.M. Los Angeles time. Who says time-reversal is hard to accomplish?

Robert Silverberg

I'm an urban New Yorker to the last molecule.

Robert Silverberg

It's the deep, fundamental bedrock of hypocrisy upon which religion is founded. Consider: no creature can be said to worship if it does not possess free will. Free will, however, is FREE. And just by virtue of being free, is intractable and incalculable, a truly Godlike gift, the faculty that makes a state of freedom possible. To exist in a state of freedom is a wild, strange thing, and was clearly intended as such. But what to the religions do with this? They say, "Very well, you possess free will; but now you must use your free will to enslave yourself to God and to us." The effrontery of it! God, who would not coerce a fly, is painted as a supreme slavemaster! In the fact of this, any creature with spirit must rebel, must serve God entirely of his own will and volition, or must not serve him at all, thus remaining true to himself and to the faculties God has given him.

Robert Sheckley

There are our ghosts,' Smithers said.It was a word he liked to use, said Brewster. Like most of us Brewster had read a few ghost stories, and to him the word 'ghosts' summoned up the creaking floorboards of a haunted house, shrouded white figures gliding silently through darkness, fluttering robes moving of their own bodiless accord, strangely transparent coaches travelling swiftly down a midnight road, and other such images quite remote from the chanting and drumming of desert folk in gaudy garb, with jingling anklets and necklaces, under a hot fierce sun. But the sounds of the Thar came from some invisible source, and to Smithers they were sounds made by ghosts.("Smithers And The Ghosts Of The Thar")

Robert Silverberg

If Jana had been given to putting her thoughts into words, she might have told Laxmi that without someone to love,there was no reason to live.

Anne McCaffrey

Above us, outlined against the brilliant sky, dragons crowded every available perching space on the Rim. And the sun made a gold of every one of them.

Anne McCaffrey

To cry was to release all sorts of ugly little pressures and tensions. Like waking out of a long, dark dream to a sun-filled day.

Anne McCaffrey

There's a fine line, you know. Between having space and having nothing.

Anne Corlett

Dragon kind was no less cruel than mankind. The Dragon, at least, acted from bestial need rather than bestial greed.”~ A thought by Lessa ~

Anne McCaffrey

There are different types of salvation." he said, diplomatically. "No." Rena shook him off. "There's only one. In the voice of God, speaking through the space between the stars.

Anne Corlett

Harper to your word be trueHolder, crafter you also hewTo honesty, integrity, and respectAll others without regard to intellect

Anne McCaffrey

It was like that all the time, in those years: an endless trip, a gaudy voyage. But powers decay. Time leaches the colors from the best of visions. The world becomes grayer. Entropy beats us down. Everything fades. Everything goes. Everything dies.

Robert Silverberg

[He] had riposted with the proper metaphysical statements, yet he was disturbed.

Robert Silverberg

It is time to end a story that began in sorrow and ordeal and has ended in a deep and lasting happiness. May it be so for others.

Anne McCaffrey

She didn't want to be the human race. It sounded too big a responsibility.

Anne Corlett

Dead or alive, you will retain all your rights.

Robert Sheckley

Fight only in direst needNot for lust or petty greedHonor those that do give birthRespect them well for their full worth

Anne McCaffrey

Home's what's left over when you've figured out all the places you don't want to be. Sounds stupid, doesn't it? But that's what we do. We say not there and not there and not there, until there's only one place left.

Anne Corlett

You get used to... what you want to get used to.

Steven Lyle Jordan

Action isn’t my forte. I’m an expert on contemplation and mild regret.

Robert Sheckley

Who was really the cop-out, Jack who went and got what he needed to make his dream real, molding a Jack Barron reality to the shape of his dreams, or me, shaping dreams to the size of mundane reality

Norman Spinrad

The AI told her not long ago that her "Why?" period might have been the shortest on record - because Mum and Dad answered every "Why?" in detail AND made sure she understood, so she wouldn't ask that particular "Why?" again. After a month "Why?" wasn't fun anymore, and she went on to other things.

Anne McCaffrey

I tried to be good to Judith, I tried to be kind and loving, but our hatred kept coming between us.

Robert Silverberg

And there I was, a woman who yearned so hard for the sky there had to be stars in my blood, yet I was stuck in Heliodor City, missing it all.

Jacqueline Koyanagi

Meanwhile here I am- Earthborn woman, a mere barbaric maula, geting deeper into Imperial Space with each passing light second. I should be trembling with fear, I suppouse. No. Let the Emperor tremble. Laylah is here!

Robert Silverberg

We shall give up the things of childhood -- gods and demons, planets and suns, guilts and regrets.

Norman Spinrad

During times of need, it was always the people with the least to give who ended up sacrificing the most.

Jacqueline Koyanagi

Treatments worked well enough for us to get by. Most people lived into old age, but the medication, like everything else, has never been free. Life was a privilege, not a right, apparently. Something you had to struggle for when you were unlucky enough to be born at the intersection of poverty and bad genes.

Jacqueline Koyanagi

‘Shall we go down and have a closer look?’ Hum asked.“ ‘All right. I think we have time — wait! What day is this?’“Hum calculated silently, then said, ‘The fifth day of Luggat.’“ ‘Damn,’ Cordovir said. ‘I have to go home and kill my wife.’“ ‘It’s a few hours before sunset,’ Hum said. ‘I think you have time to do both.’“Cordovir wasn’t sure. ‘I’d hate to be late.’“ ‘Well then. You know how fast I am,’ Hum said. ‘If it gets late, I’ll hurry back and kill her myself. How about that?’“ ‘That’s very decent of you.’ Cordovir thanked the younger man and together they slithered down the steep mountainside.

Robert Sheckley

all the time complaining at me that she could have had a career dancing topless at the Orbital Grill and Rendezvous Parlor. Her and her perky breasts. Yasmin, I told her, all the girls have perky breasts in zero-g, you were nothing special, you’re lucky a good man took you away from all that.

Anne McCaffrey

I can't stand how much like my dreams you smell; it's torture. You are torture. You wear metal on your skin like you're made of it, and it bites at me every time you're around. No matter how many showers I take, I smell your scent on me, on this ship, while I'm trying to sleep. I don't understand it, and can't stand it. I can't stand how I want you so badly and don't at the same time, because you're what I've been looking for, and I don't know what it means to have found it.

Jacqueline Koyanagi

The main thing about aliens is that they are alien. They feel no responsibility for fulfilling any of your expectations. (Dark City Lights)

Robert Silverberg

There's magic in recognizing a kindred spirit, and an even greater power in letting yourself love them. When it scares you, let it - that's your ego letting go.

Jacqueline Koyanagi

The tears I feel todayI'll wait to shed tomorrow.Though I'll not sleep this nightNor find surcease from sorrow.My eyes must keep their sight:I dare not be tear-blinded.I must be free to talkNot choked with grief, clear-minded.My mouth cannot betrayThe anguish that I know.Yes, I'll keep my tears til later:But my grief will never go.

Anne McCaffrey

Harper, treat your words with careFor they may cause joy or despairSing your songs of health and loveOf dragons flaming from above

Anne McCaffrey

There's something wrong in not appreciating one's own special abilities, my girl. Find your own limitations, yes, but don't limit yourself with false modesty.

Anne McCaffrey

What happened when there was no prospect of anything beyond this generation? What happened when...

Anne Corlett

Still, I could not imagine how being poor could be worse than being rich and hating yourself. I had seen enough of what it was like to be dead. It was time to try living.

James Patrick Kelly

Step by stepMoment by momentWe live throughAnother day

Anne McCaffrey

It ain't power that corrupts, it's the changes you put your head through getting it.

Norman Spinrad

[P]ower, terrible, unprecedented power, and with it came the unavoidable choice that had faced every power-junkie since time began: to have the sheer gall to fake being something greater than a man, or cop-out on the millions who had poured a part of themselves into your image and be something less.

Norman Spinrad

speak hard, steal the air.

Anne McCaffrey

Children's voices - even those who couldn't carry the tune - are always appealing.

Anne McCaffrey

I don't understand why anybody old enough to know the score ever gets married, anyway. Why should love require a contract? Why put yourself into the clutches of the state and give it power over you? Why invite lawyers to fuck around with your assets? Marriage is for the immature and the insecure and the ignorant. We who see through such institutions should be content to live together without legal coercion

Robert Silverberg

Why should love require a contract? Why put yourself into the clutches of the state and give it power over you? Why invite lawyers to fuck around with your assets? Marriage is for the immature and the insecure and the ignorant. We who see through such institutions should be content to live together without legal coercion.

Robert Silverberg

He created waterfalls for her out of the morning dew, and from the colored pebbles of a meadow stream he made a necklace more beautiful than emeralds, sadder than pearls. She caught him in her net of silken hair, she carried him down, down, into deep and silent waters, past obliteration. He showed her frozen stars and molten sun; she gave him long, entwined shadows and the sound of black velvet. He reached out to her and touched moss, grass, ancient trees, iridescent rocks; her fingertips, striving upwards, brushed old planets and silver moonlight, the flash of comets and the cry of dissolving suns.

Robert Sheckley

My nightly craft is winged in white, a dragon of night dark sea.Swift born, dream bound and rudderless, her captain and crew are me.We've sailed a hundred sleeping tides where no seaman's ever beenAnd only my white-winged craft and I know the wonders we have seen.

Anne McCaffrey

A physicist that I know commented that many other scientific disciplines, such as geology, anthropology, astronomy, are also challenged by biblical fundamentalism, but their people seem to be able to get on with their work without worrying unduly. Only Darwinians seem thrown into a frenzy that sends them running to litigation and demanding censorship. His explanation was that it's a rival religion.

James P. Hogan

A real scientist solves problems, not wails that they are unsolvable.

Anne McCaffrey