c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
Perhaps he found it strange being accompanied by a Chinese-Nigerian arms trafficking pirate, but the Irish priest had just followed me silently on board the covert government transport.
— Dayo Ntwari, Roses For Betty And Other Stories: The Writivism Anthology 2015
Jasper set an intercepting course towards that Rhylonian Star Duster. Maybe we can catch them on their blind side.”“Doesn’t this ship have a cloak?” Jaq asks.“Miss Synergy, I don’t know what they teach now a’days at the Academy, but ships do not wear clothes.
— Nathan Reese Maher
No status change, we hold our fire.
— Just Josh, The Puppy Room
Art sometimes imitates life. When it does, science fiction presages what form that life may take.
— Alan Joshua, The SHIVA Syndrome
The "paranormal" is what we call a phenomenon when examined through the narrow lens of what we consider "normal." You have to leave the entrapment of "normal" beliefs to understand them much as zero gravity can't be understood when you are earthbound.
— Alan Joshua, The SHIVA Syndrome
Paranormal phenomena are only acollection of abilities that challenge known science.Physical lawsdon’t explained them. You have to go beyond the limits of traditionalcategories to make any sense of them.Beau Walker--The SHIVA Syndrome
— Alan Joshua, The SHIVA Syndrome
And there’s no synthetic owners manual?” His lips twitched, smile threatening to break into a grin. A joke. He wasn’t funny. “Do you come with an owners’ manual, Captain? Because I’d like to study your troubleshooting section.”“Would you like to strip me down to my nuts and bolts, and figure out what makes me tick?”“I knew what made you tick from the moment we first met. That’s why I punched you between the legs.”~ #1001 & Caleb
— Pippa DaCosta, Girl From Above: Trapped
Maybe they seeded life on Earth millions of years ago, and now they're here to punish us for turning out to be such a lame species and inventing reality TV and shit?
— Ernest Cline, Armada
Raw, gentle, and easy, it mizzled out of the high air, a special elixir, tasting of spells and stars and air, carrying a peppery dust in it, and moving like a rare light sherry on his tongue. Rain.
— Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles
Orcs do not have enemies.” Monde tried to search for the proper term, “We have…adversaries.”“Isn’t that the same thing?”“Depends on who’s winning the war.
— Sabrina Zbasnik
Survival is insufficient
— Star Trek Voyager
You see, none of these conflicts are about things that people only sort of like. It is always about love. You may think me blasphemous to use the Passion of the Christ as an example of drama, but not so: this is the one true story, the greatest story ever told, the tale of tales even as Christ is the King of Kings, and all truly inspired fairy tales and fiction have to contain some echo or reflection of the One True Tale, or else it is no tale of any power at all, merely a pastime.The most powerful and potent tales, even when they are told awkwardly and without grace or poetry or craft, are stories of paradise lost and paradise regained; sacrifice, selfless love, forgiveness and salvation; stories of a man who learns better.
— John C. Wright, Transhuman and Subhuman: Essays on Science Fiction and Awful Truth
I knew revenge like the ghost of an old friend." ~ #1001
— Pippa DaCosta, Girl From Above: Escape
Why? Why did you kill them?”He laughed, recognizing it bore a frightening coldness. “Because you walked through the wrong door, and they paid you to do it. You will be a testament to the terror that arrives the moment you or anyone else crosses the invisible line you didn’t know existed until tonight. Spread the word.
— G.S. Jennsen, Restless
I’ve always wondered though,” Orn mused aloud, “what does God need with a starship?”“Are you going to make that stupid quip every time we pass a missionary ship?”“Until they learn a new position.
— Sabrina Zbasnik
Holy Jesus God, it's the Gerps shootin' us up!" the manager shouted. He hadn't known whether to say Germans or Japs, and came out with both at once.
— Harry Turtledove, In the Balance
Don’t talk. Don’t sputter out a solitary protest or it will be your last. Take me to them.”“Who the f**k are you?”He palmed the man’s forehead and slammed his skull against the wall. “I said don’t talk, and you want to do as I say. I’m the one thing monsters like you and your kind fear. I’m what haunts your nightmares and hunts you in the darkness.
— G.S. Jennsen, Restless
It was a subversive notion, the idea that she was free. Free to choose where to go and what to do with her time.
— G.S. Jennsen, Restless
Three men sat around a table. All were muscled and similarly greasy and easily identifiable as scum. As he breached the entrance all three were moving, drawing their own guns in surprise.Only one got off a shot.
— G.S. Jennsen, Restless
. . . there was no possible way to deny that this girl probably felt emotions much deeper than most other people. If anyone was human, she was.
— J. Kowallis, Afterimage
None were left now to unname, and yet how close I felt to them when I saw one of them swim or fly or trot or crawl across my way or over my skin, or stalk me in the night, or go along beside me for a while in the day. They seemed far closer than when their names had stood between myself and them like a clear barrier: so close that my fear of them and their fear of me became one same fear. And the attraction that many of us felt, the desire to feel or rub or caress one another’s scales or skin or feathers or fur, taste one another’s blood or flesh, keep one another warm, that attraction was now all one with the fear, and the hunter could not be told from the hunted, nor the eater from the food.
— Ursula K. Le Guin, The Unreal and the Real: Selected Stories, Volume Two: Outer Space, Inner Lands
Hey, I said we don't carry weapons, I didn't say we couldn't defend ourselves." Captain Stanley Memphis, head of alien team disguised as pint-sized critters on a quest to learn if humans are savage bastards or a benevolent tribe.
— Delilah Jean Williams, Scorched Earth, Alien Wonders
Humanity is a spectator sport. God is the spectator.
— Forrest Carr
God exists. He has one wicked sense of humor, and right now he’s having a grand old time punking the planet.
— Forrest Carr
Perhaps it started as a whisper in some white wilderness ... ' Jaycee's voice.The pain and the consciousness flooded back as the semantic trigger threw off the protective blackout. The mongol's eyes widened, and a vicious thrust to the solar plexus made Bron scream with what little breath he still retained.' ... a broken body, cradled in cold, crying futility unto a futile wind.''Jaycee, for God's sake stop it! Let me go.' He made no attempt at subvocalizing. It was as much as he could do to form the words at all. She was playing with him, deliberately using the trigger to keep him conscious so that his awareness of the torment would continue. Again and again the blows fell savagely.' ... the mind mazed not by the searing steel, the nibbling nerve ... ''Jaycee, in the name of pity!' He no longer cared whether he lived or died. All he wanted was release from the scientific and merciless battering which his body was taking.' ... some maimed martyr, crazed upon the cross, held up his head and cried unto the heavens: LORD, WHY HAST THOU FORSAKEN ME?
— Colin Kapp, Patterns Of Chaos
An illusion is when everyone is in on the joke, a delusion is when you are the joke.
— Austin Aragon, Travesty
Don't just discover . . . Encounter!
— J.P. Osterman
Apparently loved did weird things to a girl's practical decision-making skills - Matilda
— Devon Monk, Infinity Bell
This one sank deep into her marrow and made her heart soar like the shuttles piercing the stratosphere.
— Katherine McIntyre, Solid Ground
Nothing is harder on the nerves than hope.
— Forrest Carr
Clara Oswald: This is just a dream, but very clever people can hear dreams. So please, just listen. I know you're afraid, but being afraid is all right, because didn't anybody ever tell you fear is a superpower? Fear can make you faster and cleverer and stronger. And one day, you'll come back to this barn and on that day you're going to be very afraid indeed. But that's ok because if you're very wise and very strong, fear doesn't have to make you cruel or cowardly. Fear can make you kind. It doesn't matter if there's nothing under the bed or in the dark, so long as you know it's ok to be afraid of it. You're always going to be afraid, even if you learn to hide it. Fear is like a companion, a constant companion, always there. But that's ok, because fear can bring us together. Fear can bring you home. I'm going to leave you with something just so you always remember: Fear makes companions of us all. -Listen, Doctor Who, episode 8.4
— Steven Moffat
River Tam (Summer Glau): No power in the 'verse can stop me.
— Joss Whedon
It would be either a very skilled or very unwise man to steal from an assassin.” - Taliesin
— Sabrina Zbasnik, Dwarves in Space
God's M.O., he reflected, is to transmute evil into good. If He is active here, He is doing that now, although our eyes can't perceive it; the process lies hidden beneath the surface of reality, and emerges only later. To, perhaps, our waiting heirs. Paltry people who will not know the dreadful war we've gone through, and the losses we took, unless in some footnote in a minor history book they catch a notion. Some brief mention. With no list of the fallen.
— Philip K. Dick
Never take offense. Even if someone is robbing you blind, it’s usually nothing personal. Survival is a funny thing, and we all react differently to it. Some react to fear and forget to be human and humane, but that doesn’t mean they have malicious intentions. People have different boundaries, and I promise to respect yours, hon.
— J.D. Brewer, Vagabond
You have a job?”“Do you think I just fucking run this ship so I can call myself captain and get laid?”“Well, no. I thought you were a criminal.
— Pippa DaCosta, Girl From Above: Escape
An old adage warns: If you don't know your history, you will be forever condemned to repeat it. Likewise, if you don't know your science fiction, and heed its warnings, you could condemn the Earth to future catastrophe.
— Kelly Steed
My first clue time travel could be possible was in the barber's chair the day before my girlfriend's funeral.
— Timothy C. Ward, Masters of Time: A Science Fiction and Fantasy Time Travel Anthology
Such kings can destroy a world, just as easily as they can build one.
— Sarah Warden, Immortal Earth
The chaos and the confusion of all possible outcomes penetrated every pixel of computer generated light, and the waves of all sub-existential normality flooded by, creating an atmosphere of peaceful eventuality. I felt that a gradual restoration was in place, and that piece by piece, universes were being reformed and restored.
— Joel Julian, Blade Spinner
January took a breath, realizing it had been a cause from her holding it in, trying to work through the puzzle she faced. If he’s a Ghost, why was she sent on a mission to kill him?
— Samantha LaFantasie, Masters of Time: A Science Fiction and Fantasy Time Travel Anthology
By the usual reckoning, the worst books make the best films.
— Iain M. Banks
Lifting my hands from the keyboard, I fold them in my lap and tilt back my desk chair. I think, I could do it. I could turn back time.
— Devorah Fox, Masters of Time: A Science Fiction and Fantasy Time Travel Anthology
Sometimes he’d dream of hunting for Adam the Usurper twenty years in the future, or of Doctor Simmons sending Aero to burrow into his head and steal his most secret thoughts and desires.
— Alesha Escobar, Masters of Time: A Science Fiction and Fantasy Time Travel Anthology
The ultimate irony in this vast struggle (available to audience members who want to think about it but easily ignored by those who accept the semi-happy ending ) is the irony in many time loop (or ontological paradox) stories: John Connor has created himself (though he has not gone as far as the character in Robert Heinlein’s “All You Zombies” who is both his own father and mother). Far worse, by saving his mother’s life and ensuring the destruction of the Terminator, John Connor has created Skynet just as surely as Skynet has created John Connor by trying to kill him. Both Connor and Skynet exist in a time loop without outside causality. The Terminator’s surviving arm makes Skynet possible, but it is never invented, only found and back-engineered. Kyle Reese comes across time for Sarah Connor because of a picture and because John Connor asks him to, but neither the picture nor John Connor would exist if Reese had not already gone back in time. The simplest way to save the world is to let the Terminator kill Sarah Connor. Then (in all probability), no one would find a piece of the advanced technology, and Skynet could not be built. But, Cameron’s plot suggests, the “perils to come that would result from our hubris and blind faith in technology” may be inescapable, a time loop, a feedback loop, leading directly if not necessarily inevitably to destruction."Fighting the History Wars on the Big Screen: From the Terminator to Avatar" from The Films of James Cameron
— Ace G. Pilkington
illustration  Speaking before the Marion Hobby Club Marion, OH 2013 This writer is looking for an agent.An old adage warns: If you don't know your history, you will be forever condemned to repeat it. Likewise, if you don't know your science fiction, and heed its warnings, you could condemn the Earth to future catastrophe.
— Kelly Steed
I think it's important to remember that writers do not have a monopoly of wisdom on their books. They can be wrong about their own books, they can often learn about their own books
— China Miéville
I love writing and can't imagine not being able to do it. I want an easy life and if it had been difficult doing it I wouldn't be doing it. I do admire writers who do it even though it costs them.
— Iain M. Banks
They worried to an excessive degree about getting gender correct, as if elves gave a shit. Humans could keep their concerns about everyone’s genitalia to themselves.
— Sabrina Zbasnik
Sanity is over-rated. It lacks color.
— Forrest  Carr, A Journal of the Crazy Year
What’s more insane? Hearing imaginary voices? Or not hearing the real ones?
— Forrest  Carr, A Journal of the Crazy Year
Space, as you can see, is a complete void, nothing but clear air, without solid objects or the illumination of light. On some of our photographs of space, however, studied close to, even without a magnifying glass or an enlargement lens, you will notice, in the remote background, stars, some solitary, others in shimmering clusters. And in the next set of photographs you will see the alien machine we encountered that sat stubbornly stationary in the way of our unselfgoverned path.
— Philip   Dodd, Klubbe the Turkle and the Golden Star Coracle
I suppose it's impossible to say that they will not invent anything else, because they might," said Zubria. "And, of course, if one thought of something that they might invent, one would have thought of it oneself, therefore one would be the inventor of what one thought of, and they would not be, which would make one an inventor, like them.
— Philip   Dodd, Klubbe the Turkle and the Golden Star Coracle
To be an atheist is to maintain God. His existence or his non-existence, it amounts to much the same, on the plane of proof.
— Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness
Some readers may realize that this story, first published in 1956, has been overtaken by events. In 1965, astronomers discovered that Mercury does not keep one side always to the Sun, but has a period of rotation of about fifty-four days, so that all parts of it are exposed to the sunlight at one time or another.Well, what can I do except say that I wish astronomers would get things right to begin with?And I certainly refuse to change the story to suit their whims.
— Isaac Asimov, The Best of Isaac Asimov
Guns are not the problem. The species is the problem.
— Forrest  Carr, A Journal of the Crazy Year
Space is infinite. To the mind that means freedom, liberation.' So wrote Arisko, our greatest turkle philosopher, in his most famous work, 'Thoughts In A Bathtub'," said Dottia, dreamily, in an inspired state.
— Philip   Dodd, Klubbe the Turkle and the Golden Star Coracle
We don’t go in for that psychodynamic stuff around here. Those guys will talk you to death, clean out your bank account while they are doing it, and then invite you to come back and express your innermost feelings about being broke.
— Forrest  Carr, A Journal of the Crazy Year
Powell’s face appeared on screen. “It’s true, the doomsday crowd is a little crazy,” she said, looking thoughtful. “But that doesn’t mean they’re wrong.
— Forrest  Carr, A Journal of the Crazy Year
You have to think if we've been visited by extraterrestrial life, it was like a zookeeper walking into the chimp enclosure: He looks around, takes some pictures, then leaves without interacting significantly with the environment. Meanwhile the chimps have no idea what the fuck just happened.
— J. Richard Singleton
In turkle time a lin is the briefest moment that can just about be measured. Ninety lins make a tikk, one hundred tikks make a lod, thirty eight lods make a yan, the time it takes the planet Ankor to make one complete turn in the path of the star, Ruru, its main source of light and warmth. Ten yans make a zac. Six zacs make a yod, twenty yods make a zik. Twelve ziks make a zan. Sixteen zans make a nik.
— Philip   Dodd, Klubbe the Turkle and the Golden Star Coracle
And so the result of several years of Everybody Shareskyism, other than slaughtering people, is for everybody to stand around and stare blankly at each other.
— Lao She, Cat Country : A Satirical Novel of China in the 1930s
Perhaps the god who had made the Cat People intended them as a joke. They had schools, but no education; politicians but no government; people, but no personal integrity; faces, but no concept of face. One had to admit that their god had gone a little too far with his little joke.
— Lao She
Flammflorbs, archypodsplays, clinker crabs, dorsaldorydabbs, mingslakks, linglimes, occocobbers, firgengobblers, smitesnides, orkusta shelled bunkbarnacles, balootabinks, jorgentua jellyfish, tungol widders, teleosti chimaras, and things stranger, yet to be named, Klubbe and his crew members observed through their portholes, lit by the lamps of their submarine's lanterns.
— Philip   Dodd, Klubbe the Turkle and the Golden Star Coracle
I understand now that you cannot fight for a noble cause with heinous actions.
— Andre Mikhailovich Solonitsyn
Of course, if we do find the Great Glom, we will see other gloms as well," said Dottia. "I mean, he will not exist alone, will he? Mythic creatures like him are often spoken of as if they did exist alone, and they were born unique, hatched from a singular egg, out of nowhere, with no parents, mate or offspring. He will have a female glom as his wife, his own glom children, and an entire race of gloms as his subjects." "Certainly, he will, I agree," said Klubbe.
— Philip   Dodd, Klubbe the Turkle and the Golden Star Coracle
God exists. He has one wicked since of humor, and right now he’s having a grand old time punking the planet.
— Forrest  Carr, A Journal of the Crazy Year
I killed a couple of people,” Scooter said. “Wanna play cards?
— Forrest  Carr, A Journal of the Crazy Year
The world turns because Man is inspired to better himself
— Wayne Wignall, Earth and Mars
The only thing what happens in the Houses of Parliament is the debate about foxes, badgers and moles
— Wayne Wignall, Earth and Mars
You can scoff at opinions. You can reject hypotheses. You can discard theories out of hand. But you cannot reject the facts
— Forrest  Carr, A Journal of the Crazy Year
Don't Panic
— Douglas Adams
Veins stood out in her temples as she struggled against her silence. No one noticed. Those words had already been used up, spent, thrown out into the atmosphere to dissipate without effect.
— Danielle Ste. Just, The Effect-Displacement Assassin
John raised an eyebrow. “So you wouldn’t date someone like you?”“Oh, hell, no. I’m insane, but that would be nuts.
— Forrest  Carr
I have been and always shall be your friend.
— The Intrepid Mr. Spock
They were more than partners, more than brothers; they were very nearly the same person.
— A.C. Williams
Noah gave an exaggerated eye roll. “Just out of curiosity, is this the stupidest thing you’ve ever done?”“It wouldn’t be fair to rank them.” Caleb gunned the engine.
— G.S. Jennsen, Transcendence: Aurora Rising Book Three
Kandinski looked up. 'Do you read science fiction?' he asked matter-of-factly.'Not as a rule,' Ward admitted. When Kandinski said nothing he went on: 'Perhaps I’m too skeptical, but I can’t take it too seriously.'Kandinski pulled at a blister on his palm. 'No one suggests you should. What you mean is that you take it too seriously.'Accepting the rebuke with a smile at himself, Ward pulled out one of the magazines and sat down at a table next to Kandinski. On the cover was a placid suburban setting of snugly eaved houses, yew trees, and children’s bicycles. Spreading slowly across the roof-tops was an enormous pulpy nightmare, blocking out the sun behind it and throwing a weird phosphorescent glow over the roofs and lawns. 'You’re probably right,' Ward said, showing the cover to Kandinski. 'I’d hate to want to take that seriously.'("The Venus Hunters")
— J.G. Ballard
Caleb!” The sharp, forceful tone demanded he halt. He found he had complied, but did not turn around. His voice sounded low and hoarse, likely because he couldn’t breathe. “Alex, I can’t.
— G.S. Jennsen, Transcendence: Aurora Rising Book Three
Is it painful?" the groundskeeper asked. "I am asking for science.
— John Scalzi, The Human Division
Alone for a few precious seconds, he drew in a deep breath. He stood on a ruined street in a ruined city. Destruction stretched for kilometers in every direction, all caused by a single man for whom vengeance had devolved into madness.
— G.S. Jennsen, Transcendence: Aurora Rising Book Three
He made sure his tone remained casual. He was trying to keep his son unaware of the encroaching alien invasion for as long as he could, be it another day or another hour. Once innocence was lost it was never regained.So he took his son fishing and strolled along the river and pretended as though the galaxy wasn’t on fire.
— G.S. Jennsen, Transcendence: Aurora Rising Book Three
People who couldn't imagine themselves capable of evil were at a major disadvantage in dealing with people who didn't need to imagine, because they already were. She'd said it was always a mistake, to believe those people were different, special, infected with something that was inhuman, subhuman, fundamentally other. Which reminded her of what her mother had said about Corbell Picket. That evil wasn't glamorous, but just the result of ordinary half-assed badness, high school badness, given enough room, however that might happen, to become its bigger self. Bigger, with more horrible results, but never more than the cumulative weight of ordinary human baseness.
— William Gibson
Daisies are perennials
—  they always grow back.
Xander, there are two certainties in life--death and truth. They will both pursue you to your grave. There is no escaping them. But we run from them anyway in hopes that somehow we can slip by unnoticed. In the end, one or both of them catch up. Running doesn't solve anything.
— A.C. Williams
I shot the first planet this afternoon.
— Andrew J. Patrick, Solar System Blues
hand. I was charged with organizing the messages: descriptions of the creatures, descriptions of their space vessels, descriptions of their conveyances, of their weapons, of their movements. Positions of our soldiers, of our allies’ soldiers. Troop movements. New arrivals of space vessels. Reports of casualties. Dear God, the casualties. And their descriptions. Charred piles of ash; bloodless carcases; crumpled, broken bodies; crushed jelly; roasted, dead meat. All…in these hands.
— Stephanie Osborn, The Bunker
Wait awhile, and everything will change."~'Griblich
— Stephanie Osborn, The More Things Change
...and now over to our foriegn allegory correspondant, Barv Tweezman." ~The Shielding of Mortimer Townes
— Montgomery Thompson
Unearth marvels as you walk the path,Stand in awe,Therein is the joy of life.
— Barbara Neville, Cowgirls Just Wanna Have Fun
He’s as tense as I am, maybe even more so, but it’s so hard to reconcile that with the serenity of weightlessness. His faux-blond hair is floating out away from his head. He’s wearing a worn, much-mended, and too-large shirt his friend in town must’ve found for him to help him blend in. He looks nothing like the Romeo who dragged me off the base, nothing like the Cormac who threw himself between his own people and me. It’s like that guy’s gone, and I killed him.
— Amie Kaufman, This Shattered World
Oh, oh. My heart starts that quivering, fluttering thing it does whenever he hints at his desire for me. Lacing his fingers through mine, he moves to close the gap between us. I know he’s only holding my hand, but it’s the manner in which his fingers curl around mine, and the way his eyes bore into me that makes it seem much more intimate.
— Siobhan Davis, Beyond Reach
Secrets, however long they are kept, usually still manage to be brought to light. The best you can hope for is that you’ll be in control of when a secret gets out, not if it does.” -Melody in CHIMERA-
— Vaun Murphrey, Chimera
What's it like to be a living legend? A lot fucking better than being a dead one..." Geordie Selwyn, Appetite for Corruption
— Hilary Mortz
I won’t pressure you, Ari, but I’m not opposed to subtle acts of persuasion.
— Siobhan Davis, Beyond Reach
Shunting closer, I snuggle into his chest, soaking up his fresh woodsy scent. His arms encircle me and pull me close. “You always smell like home,” I whisper under my breath. Smooth, soft fingers tilt my chin upward, and I’m startled when my face meets his. Tears glisten in his eyes as he looks at me adoringly. Pressing his forehead to mine, he kisses me sweetly, his lips making brisk tantalizing sweeps across my mouth.“My heart is your home,” he whispers, his voice breathless. “It always will be.
— Siobhan Davis, Beyond Reach
Imagine a perfect world
— Bruce McQueen, The Pearl and the Golden Plinth: Magic and Sorcery clash together in this epic tale of legends.
Wit had conquered science by laughing it out of court.
— Philip Schuyler Allen
There are many places that are not made for staying," Heckleck said. "They are too harsh, too hard, and too far away from whatever you call home. You don't root where you don't have to, unless you're unluck.
— Cecil Castellucci, Tin Star
One moment I was sitting in your ship feeling very depressed, and the next moment I was standing here feeling utterly miserable. An Improbability Field I expect.
— Douglas Adams
Perfection all the time would drive them mad. For every perfect little town, there's something ugly underneath. No dream without the nightmare.
— Blake Crouch
(...)Through the ship's telescopes, he had watched the death of the solar system. With his own eyes, he had seen the volcanoes of Mars erupt for the first time in a billion years; Venus briefly naked as her atmosphere was blasted into space before she herself was consumed; the gas giants exploding into incandescent fireballs. But these were empty, meaningless spectacles compared with the tragedy of Earth.That, too, he had watched through the lenses of cameras that had survived a few minutes longer than the devoted men who had sacrificed the last moments of their lives to set them up. He had seen ...... the Great Pyramid, glowing dully red before it slumped into a puddle of molten stone ...... the floor of the Atlantic, baked rock-hard in seconds, before it was submerged again, by the lava gushing from the volcanoes of the Mid-ocean Rift...... the Moon rising above the flaming forests of Brazil and now itself shining almost as brilliantly as had the Sun, on its last setting, only minutes before ...... the continent of Antarctica emerging briefly after its long burial, as the kilometres of ancient ice were burned away ...... the mighty central span of the Gibraltar Bridge, melting even as it slumped downward through the burning air ...In that last century the Earth was haunted with ghosts - not of the dead, but of those who now could never be born. For five hundred years the birthrate had been held at a level that would reduce the human population to a few millions when the end finally came. Whole cities - even countries - had been deserted as mankind huddled together for History's closing act.
— Arthur C. Clarke
There’s a part of me that recognizes him on a cellular level, a part that seeks his comfort and solace, that feels more than comfortable in his arms. And when he stares at me with that deep penetrating gaze of his, my body reacts in all the right, and wrong, ways.
— Siobhan Davis, Beyond Reach
Heaviness coats my brain, and I’m surprised at the turn in our conversation; we’re getting into the deep stuff. “Right now, you and me? This feels like fate, if fate can be felt.
— Siobhan Davis, Beyond Reach
Time is spent never bought. Minutes count when seconds blur. Memories are past that’s caught. Imaginings are future’s lure.”Cass and Silver Rainbow-
— Vaun Murphrey, Vector
There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why. Science fiction dreams of the things that never were and asks why not? The answer to which is often "Because it might not be very wise." But, as that has never stopped humans before...it could make a helluva good story!" [Riffing on Bobby Kennedy]
— Micah R. Sisk
Metaphorically, Tom said, if you take knowledge as light, and ignorance as dark, there does sometimes seem to be a real presence to the dark -- to ignorance. Something more tactile and muscley than just lack of knowledge. A sort of will to ignorance. It would explain some politicians.
— Elizabeth Moon
Every science fiction is a reading of the period that produced it.
— Andrew Durbin, Mature Themes
In other news, It’s seven sols till the harvest, and I still haven’t prepared. For starters, I need to make a hoe. Also, I need to make an outdoor shed for the potatoes. I can’t just pile them up outside. The next major storm would cause The Great Martian Potato Migration.
— Andy Weir, The Martian
Love isn't just wanting another person the way you want to own an object you see in a store. That's just desire. You want to have it around, take it home and set it up somewhere in the apartment like a lamp.
— Philip K. Dick, Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said
Every vice of the Empire has been repeated in the Foundation. Inertia! Our ruling class knows one law
—  nochange. Despotism! They know one rule
A minute later the steam stopped. By then, I was soaking wet and, no doubt, my pores were open. Some people pay a fortune for this kind of beauty treatment. I got mine for free, if you disregard the bruises, headache and all those dead people."- Corin Hayes, Silent City (working title)
— G.R. Matthews
When I was a child, I thought as a child. But now I have put away childish things.
— Philip K. Dick
I have never met a person who possessed a privilege who did not exercise that privilege to the fullest extent that they possibly could. Say what you like of a belief...of a party...of a finance system..of a power. All I see is privilege and its consequences. States are not in my opinion composed of structures supporting privilege but of structures denying it...in other words deciding who is not invited to the table.
— Robert Jackson Bennett, City of Stairs
–It’s not Sci-Fi, we insist, It’s SF.Every time you say that a Venusian Slime Boy dies, you know.
— Hal Duncan, Rhapsody: Notes on Strange Fictions
the crescent sun is high, the moon low; life is not for the faint-hearted; so why the fuck should art be?
— Hal Duncan, Rhapsody: Notes on Strange Fictions
This is the fiction that I’m referring to as rhapsody, this stitching of mimetic representation, oneiric imagery, ludic rules, allegoric morals, satiric critique and diegetic story into complex quiltings of narrative.
— Hal Duncan, Rhapsody: Notes on Strange Fictions
– No SF novel ever won the Booker, growls a prowling clansman on his way into the SF Café.The librarian swings a shotgun from inside her longcoat, blasts the bullshit axiom from the air. Screw the Booker, she thinks. She’d rather have a hookah.
— Hal Duncan, Rhapsody: Notes on Strange Fictions
Fuck the epistemic modality; this is alethic modality we’re talking now, not factuality but possibility.
— Hal Duncan, Rhapsody: Notes on Strange Fictions
We have to destroy the radioactive brain of Madame Curie.
— A. Lee Martinez, Emperor Mollusk versus The Sinister Brain
Soylent Brown? It ain’t people, but it comes from them.
— Hal Duncan, Rhapsody: Notes on Strange Fictions
The best time to plan a tree was twenty years ago
—  the second best time is now.
I learned as a kid that homo sapiens would rather fight other homo sapiens than microbes. For one thing, it’s easier. And there’s something satisfying about knowing somebody else is the bad guy and seeing them laid out on the street in front of you. Something human.Microbes? The little bastards just go hide, multiply, and come back to bite you when you least expect it.
— Lee S. Hawke, Division: A Collection of Science Fiction Fairytales
Since he'd stepped out of medical school, all he'd ever done was fulfil the same three basic templates, again and again and again. The possibility of infinite variation had led only to convergence.
— Lee S. Hawke, Division: A Collection of Science Fiction Fairytales
When we decided to have Julie, I couldn’t carry her. We sat down and the hard numbers stared back at us. I made twice as much as Fern. We wouldn’t have been able to feed ourselves, let alone another mouth, if I’d been the one to hold her. And so we both went for the operation, and they took eggs from the two of us and made them one. And then I squeezed Fern’s hand when she went into the theatre, and when she came out again they’d put it inside her. And sheltered by her body, the one cell that was us divided and became two, and then three, and then four hundred million, and then they divided into parts. Lungs, heart, brain, mouth. And finally, when she was ready, Julie divided from Fern and there were three of us.
— Lee S. Hawke
The spelunkers of speculative fiction mining phosphorescent filth from the bowels of the city of New Sodom, the Sci-Fi freaks scraping kipple and back from the bins of decades-old shit sandwiches out back, composting it to grow shrooms, we have built this thing to take its 
— Hal Duncan, Rhapsody: Notes on Strange Fictions
I’ve had a lot of lieutenants over the years, and all the good ones were sick, sick individuals. You might be the best one yet.
— Henry V. O'Neil, Orphan Brigade
Food’s the killer. The clock starts as soon as the troops are on the ground. You wouldn’t believe how fast they consume what they’re carrying, and then … if I don’t get them more, if I don’t find them more … they die.
— Henry V. O'Neil, Orphan Brigade
In the ghetto of Genre, anything goes, man. When you live in the gutter it doesn’t matter if you’re filthy. In theory anyway.
— Hal Duncan, Rhapsody: Notes on Strange Fictions
All worlds of fiction are alternative realities.
— Hal Duncan, Rhapsody: Notes on Strange Fictions
It's not dystopia to think history will repeat itself.
— Mord McGhee, Murder Red Ink
Life’s more science-fictiony by the day.
— David Mitchell, The Bone Clocks
Mr Baley", said Quemot, "you can't treat human emotions as though they were built about a positronic brain"."I'm not saying you can. Robotics is a deductive science and sociology an inductive one. But mathematics can be made to apply in either case.
— Isaac Asimov, The Naked Sun
There were so many things a tree could do: add color, provide shade, drop fruit, or become a children's playground, a whole sky universe to climb and hang from; an architecture of food and pleasure, that was a tree.
— Ray Bradbury
I was never able to conquer the distance between persons. An animal is fixed to its here-and-now by the senses, but man manages to detach himself, to remember, to sympathize with others, to visualize their states of mind and feelings: this, fortunately, is not true. In such attempts at pseudo merging and transferral we are only able, imperfectly, darkly, to visualize ourselves. What would happen to us if we could truly sympathize with others, feel with them, suffer for them? The fact that human anguish, fear, and suffering melt away with the death of the individual, that nothing remains of the ascents, the declines, the orgasms, and the agonies, is a praiseworthy gift of evolution, which made us like the animals. If from every unfortunate, from every victim, there remained even a single atom of his feelings, if thus grew the inheritance ofthe generations, if even a spark could pass from man to man, the world would be full of raw, bowel-torn howling.We are like snails, each stuck to his own leaf.
— Stanisław Lem
I love the machines and I cannot allow them and the humans of Twinmortal to suffer.-Hanshin
— Carolina Cody Aldaz, The Guardians of the Earth Type Planets
Personally, I’d like to see the word genre taken out back and shot, a bullet in the back of its head, if it’s going to be so overloaded with meanings it’s just gibberish skewed to self-serving doublethink.
— Hal Duncan, Rhapsody: Notes on Strange Fictions
Well, if a Little Fuzzy finds a door open, I’d like to know why he shouldn’t come in and look around.
— H. Beam Piper
He finds a basket and lays fish inside it. Charcoal is in a wooden bucket. Enrique lifts it, basket in his other hand, and moves through shadow toward daylight.A presence makes him turn his head. He sees no one, yet someone is there.He sets down fish and charcoal. Straightening up, Enrique slips his Bowie knife clear of its sheath. He listens, tries to sense the man’s place. This intruder lies low. Is concealed. Behind those barrels? In that corner, crouched down? Enrique shuts his eyes, holds his breath a moment and exhales, his breath’s movement the only sound, trying to feel on his skin some heat from another
— John Lauricella, 2094
Dawn wore a pink dress and crept across the land like a timid girl. Her sister Morning followed, dressed in blue, the sun a dazzling locket on her breast.
— Robert F. Young
You know what it is like to wake up in the middle of a bunch of corpses with a little girl in your arms scared to death?-Enyo
— Carolina Cody Aldaz, The Guardians of the Earth Type Planets
My experiment has demonstrated that people from the past can be artificially reincarnated. The purpose is so people from Twinmortal do not commit the same error that we did.-Amaranth
— Carolina Cody Aldaz, The Guardians of the Earth Type Planets
My purpose is to change the fact that you’re just food. If you learn the lessons well you will be able to have a happy long life. A lot of us believe that the human being deserves the opportunity and the privilege to coexist with us. That’s why we risk ourselves and make the effort to take care of you.- Átropos
— Carolina Cody Aldaz, The Guardians of the Earth Type Planets
Gods do not decide who goes to Heaven or who goes to Hell. That is for the Cosmic Forces to decide. You are as close to being like a God than you ever will be. Gods are the creators and if they are proud of their work they will remain as silent watchers. This isn’t like the ancient times when Gods would interfere in the affairs of man, or whatever creatures they created. They became arrogant and selfish in their deeds, only concerned with their own private agendas and using their creations as tools of blackmail and spite. It got so they were completely shaping the destinies of worlds just to seduce a sibling into practicing explicit acts of intercourse. They were incestuous monstrosities who were given far too many liberties, and they abused the power bestowed upon them. Eventually the Cosmic Forces intervened and limited the powers of the Gods. These days Gods are not born and they do not perform sex. The few that are left are merely prisoners of the Cosmic Forces, free to roam across the Multiverse and create, but unable to indulge in their own egotistical fantasies. They have become tortured souls, much like their creations.
— Dale M. Chatwin, Underneath the Draconian Sky
Marla poked Duncan. He stepped forward. "Maybe I can help."Atomic Jack looked at him., his eyes glowed a sickening shade of radioactive orange. "I really don't see how." He slipped off his glove and his hand burst into small flames. The guy didn't yell though, or make out like he was in pain. He just grinned and showed a mouthful of orange teeth.
— Michael Prelee, Milky Way Repo
Saji has had things done to people who crossed him or whom he has perceived as crossing him. Ugly things. These guys we're meeting? They think they're tough. They run book, own strip clubs, dabble in petty theft and probably sell dope for all I know and they're comfortable in that world, thinking they own it. That arrogance? That feeling that they can just push people around and do anything they want? It has left them with one foot in the grave and they don't even know it.
— Michael Prelee, Milky Way Repo
1620Each quantum event, each of the trillions of times reality’s particles interact with each other every instant, is like a note that rings and resonates throughout the great bell of creation. And the sound of the ringing propagates instantaneously, everywhere at once, interconnecting all things. This is a truth of our universe. It is a mystical truth, that reality at its deepest level is an undivided wholeness.~ David Zindell
— David Zindell
We are a species born from the planet. If the machines truly want to protect the Earth type planets they must learn to take care of us too.- Sun Wukong
— Carolina Cody Aldaz, The Guardians of the Earth Type Planets
I need to fight for the preservation of the Earth type planets and its coexistence with worlds after death.-Banyan
— Carolina Cody Aldaz, The Guardians of the Earth Type Planets
There's a need, too, for a special name in order to distinguish between this present world and the former world in which the police carried old-fashioned revolvers. ... 1Q84 - that's what I'll call this new world. Q is for 'question mark'. A world that bears a question.
— Haruki Murakami, 1Q84
I am a more modern female vampire since I came just when our world was disappearing due to the intromission of this future.-Enyo
— Carolina Cody Aldaz, The Guardians of the Earth Type Planets
Hope replaced fear. Light subsumed darkness. Strength, born of the power of this presence, mingled with Kathryn's own determination and reordered the last of her mangled body and soul, realigning them into all that she had once been.What she would now be was once again an open question.
— Kirsten Beyer, The Eternal Tide
Fuck, if only ‘aesthetic idiom’ didn’t sound so damn poncy.
— Hal Duncan, Rhapsody: Notes on Strange Fictions
The answer is they didn't. They aren't here, Razor. They never were it's just us. It's always been just us.
— Rick Yancey, The Infinite Sea
Nice passion is reading
— Leo Tolstoy
Book is a nice companion
— Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
You can use logic to justify just about anything, that's its power and it's flaw.
— Captain Katherine Janeway
If the only option you leave poor people with is to resort to violence in order to survive, they’ll do just that. And there are lots more poor people in this world than there are rich ones.
— Michael Monroe, Afterlife
I get tired of hearing some science-fiction fans saying that characterization isn't important in SF. In point of fact, I think it's probably more important in SF than in mainstream fiction. After all, if the author can't characterize humans well, he or she probably can't characterize aliens well either.
— Robert J. Sawyer
Fantasy? That's for the Fire Birds. Fantasy, even when it takes science-fictional forms, which it often does, is dangerous. It is escapist. It is daydreaming. It has nothing to do with the world and the world's problems.So said the snobs who did not know themselves as snobs.
— Ray Bradbury, Zen and the Art of Writing and the Joy of Writing: Two Essays
A joke is a witticism or play on words that’s meant to be funny. I say ‘meant to be’ because most jokes aren’t funny. They range between mildly amusing and grimace-inducingly annoying.
— Michael Monroe, Afterlife
I’m sorry, Bill, I thought you said something about aliens? Did you give up the menthols for marijuana? Or maybe they now have flavored joints as well?
— Daniel P. Douglas, Truth Insurrected: The Saint Mary Project
You shouldn’t say mean things to people before they kill you. It’s being a sore loser.
— Michael Monroe, Afterlife
Blacker than the night, the wedge penetrated the darkness. An F 117 raced by, the roar from its engines screaming through the interior of the chopper, and then it sliced away a piece of sky and disappeared into the void.-Narrator, Truth Insurrected: The Saint Mary Project
— Daniel P. Douglas, Truth Insurrected: The Saint Mary Project
You can use logic to justify just about anything, that's its power and its flaw.
— Captain Katherine Janeway
The moon shines like a freshly unwrapped cheese ball at the holidays.”-William Harrison in Truth Insurrected: The Saint Mary Project
— Daniel P. Douglas, Truth Insurrected: The Saint Mary Project
Truth is mighty and will prevail.
— Daniel P. Douglas, Truth Insurrected: The Saint Mary Project
Dale’s face is older. Just a little. Around the eyes and mouth. The skin of his neck. The back of his hands. Maybe not, he thinks, turning on the faucet, letting the water grow warm then hot.	He begins shaving his lubricated chin and cheeks. Chrysalis hibernation slows things down, but it doesn't stop them, not all together, and he finds himself to currently resemble something between a derelict and a college student, neither one ringing particularly desirable in his present mood.
— David Edward Wagner, Marvelous Things
Mary Shelley may well have invented science fiction. I think she did! But after that it seemed to be a boys' game.
— William Gibson
Let them come. We’ve got helicopters, tanks, jets, and big guns. We’ve got armies of robots. What do they have but their stench and the squalor they live in?
— Michael Monroe, Afterlife
I was able to bring the souls from the past back to life.-Amaranth
— Carolina Cody Aldaz, The Guardians of the Earth Type Planets
There are only a few planets with life. It is an oddity. It is really difficult to have the necessary conditions not only to support life but also to maintain the life inside a planet.-Loto
— Carolina Cody Aldaz, The Guardians of the Earth Type Planets
There’s a big difference between being numb to something and being immune to it.
— Michael Monroe, Afterlife
Well you know what they say. It’s always raining somewhere.
— Michael Monroe, Afterlife
You’ll find a way. You’ll always find a way. And on the rare occasions when you can’t, you’ll have friends who will.
— Michael Monroe, Afterlife
Humans have been doin’ awful things to each other throughout history. Humanity’s not as great as you make it out to be. I do what needs to be done, and that’s that. We’re about to go to war, Earl. There ain’t no humanity in war.
— Michael Monroe, Afterlife
We all end up dying in the end. It’s just a question of how and when.
— Michael Monroe, Afterlife
As far as I know, there’s nothing more dangerous than a man who doesn’t care if he lives or dies.
— Michael Monroe, Afterlife
A good friend is someone who gets ya drunk and then walks ya home afterwards.
— Michael Monroe, Afterlife
Everyone has the right to believe whatever he or she wants. Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Pagans, atheitsts, and every other religion. People can follow whichever they choose. Even if you and I believe Christianity is the truth, we must allow others to choose their own beliefs. You can’t force anyone to believe something they don’t, anyway.
— Michael Monroe, Afterlife
Our world must be hell, then. It must be the hell of some other place where all of us committed atrocious sins of some sort, and now we’re stuck here until we die and either come back or are whisked off to some other hell. It couldn’t be worse than this one, though.
— Michael Monroe, Afterlife
He could argue a case for anything, but that doesn’t change the fact he’s wrong most of the time.
— Michael Monroe, Afterlife