c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
Harl whirled round, all his attention ... on Skulker. "What is that on your carapace?""What?" Skulker tried to peer back... A tinny voice issued from somewhere... It took Skulker a moment to recognize it as that of the human male he earlier encountered. "It's CTD gecko mine - yield of about five kilotones." Skulker's shriek terminated in a blast that peeled back four square kilometers of jungle canopy and sunk a crater down to the bedrock.
— Neal Asher, Prador Moon
This has serveral consequences, starting with screwing over most cryptography algorithms--translation: all your bank account are belong to us--
— Charles Stross, The Atrocity Archives
We got places to go, people to meet, and things to blow up!That needs to be cross-stiched on a pillow
— Ezekiel Carsella
They’re only askin’ you to do one thing. From what Rogue says, you ain’t exactly reluctant.”“F**k myself into a coma. Sure, I can do that. Then what?”“Uh, wait an hour?
— Michelle O'Leary, Light of Kaska
Because of an imaginary voice, Nicholas had become a whole person; rather than the partial person he had been in Berkeley. If he had remained in Berkeley he would have lived and died a partial person, never knowing completeness.
— Philip K. Dick, Radio Free Albemuth
i can wait wait wait..to go to the other side of life..but dis wait seems like d rainbow in the night..so dat u have to wonder about the presence of sun in no light
— Sunil Sharma
He spent the afternoon alone in the streets.
— Orson Scott Card
Frankie runs a sex moon and has kids. My head hurts just thinking about it. You still keep up with her, too, then?”Ryelle's face took on a hunted expression. “She sends me coupons, Declan.
— Michelle O'Leary, No Such Thing
Sometimes it's hard for me to understand that people can believe in me, that they can trust that I'll be anything more than the sum of the skeletons in my closet. But I can be. And I am.
— Michael A. Martin & Andy Mangels, Skeletons in the Closet
Every day we are challenged by events, people and situations that are extremely frustrating and anger producing.
— Kwame Addai
Where is the world whose people don't prefer a comfortable, warm, and well-worn belief, however illogical, to the chilly winds of uncertainty?
— Isaac Asimov, Foundation and Earth
I don't speak, I operate a machine called language. It creaks and groans, but is mine own.
— Frank Herbert, Dune Messiah
You pays your money and you takes your choice.
— Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
What is it in humans that makes us so eager to believe ill of one another? ... What makes us so hungry for it? Failed idealism, he suspected. We disappoint ourselves and then look around for other failures to convince ourselves: it's not just me. (15)
— Mary Doria Russell, Children of God
That's all science fiction was ever about. Hating the way things are, wanting to make things different.
— Ray Bradbury, Quicker Than the Eye
[The Void Which Binds] actual but unaccessible presence in our universe is one of the prime causes for our species elaborating myth and religion, for our stubborn, blind belief in extrasensory powers, in telepathy and precognition, in demons and demigods and resurrection and reincarnation and ghosts and messiahs and so many other categories of almost-but-not-quite satisfying bullshit.
— Dan Simmons, The Rise of Endymion
By the time the Somnambulist had set her creaking bones to rest on their assigned landing pad, Holden had lost all patience with human stupidity.So, of course, it came out to meet him.
— James S.A. Corey
The red tongues that went licking up my heap of wood were an altogether new and strange thing to Weena.
— H.G. Wells, The Time Machine
Up to me. Great. I could hurt my mom and my sisters, or I could hurt my dad. Perfect. Isn't divorce fun?
— Katherine Applegate, The Stranger
I wouldn’t joke if you weren’t always patching me up,” Davin retorted. He looked at Chad again. “You must have noticed, right? It’s kind of cute, actually.” Though my heart fluttered, I tried to shoot him a warning glare. He ignored me. “I like to call her Doctor Fisher.
— J.M.  Richards, Tall, Dark Streak of Lightning
Then, as Father had trained him, Rigg thought past his feelings.
— Orson Scott Card, Pathfinder
Spoon boy: Do not try and bend the spoon - that's impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth.Neo: What truth?Spoon boy: There is no spoon.
— The Wachowski Brothers, The Matrix Revolutions Screenplay
My father and I used to watch a ton of old horror movies when I was growing up. ’The Creature from the Black Lagoon‘ was one of my father’s favorites and he was very excited for me to see the film. But after the movie was over, I told him that I was kind of bored. I said to him, ‘I’m sorry, Daddy, but I saw the zipper in the back of the monster’s costume. From that point on, I was really never scared at all. The point I’m trying to make is that I don’t believe someone intentionally tipped off the target. And I maintain that no one made some horrendous mistake, which I’m now trying to cover up. I believe what really happened with the operation was that our target ended up seeing the zipper. Orlo Kharms realized something around him wasn’t… real. And he was able to avoid the trap we had laid out for him.
— Richard Finney, Black Mariah: "A Calling"
She was petrified now but I simply slung her over my shoulder and made for my bunk. My 2IC who had caught the whole show approached.‘Sir do you think it’s fair, you have banned all the men from having sex yet here you are about to indulge your base nature.’I swung up an arm, ‘tell them to help themselves, there are plenty to go round.’He paled when he realised that I meant the females, ‘I will tell them sir.’‘Be sure to Peter, I don’t want to have to repopulate the whole human race by myself now do I.’‘It doesn’t bear thinking about sir.
— J.W. Murison, Death Rises
All I see is my father’s tax money being wasted on shooting satellite pictures of South America like you guys work for the Travel Channel.-- Todd Dooley (BLACK MARIAH - A Calling)
— Richard Finney, Black Mariah: "A Calling"
Twice the size of a full grown man, with four muscular arms, it was his worst nightmare on steroids. -The Hyperscape Project
— Donald Swan
I’m now requesting you refrain from calling me this early in the morning, before I’ve had a chance to steel my defenses against hearing you utter the word ‘lizard.’”-- spoken by Dr. Jeri Asheer... to Chris Dixon.
— Richard Finney
I guess I should thank you for totally making my morning. It’s not every day a stranger notices my perspiration level.- Dr. Jeri Asher (BLACK MARIAH - A Calling)
— Richard Finney, Black Mariah: "A Calling"
Elijah blinked in dazzling sunlight and took a deep breath. The sweet-pepper scent of meadow grass told him immediately where he was. Winded, he skidded to a halt as the portal spat him out. Above him stretched skies of cornflower blue, dotted with threadbare white clouds sailing over like cotton galleons on the summer breeze.
— Sharon Sant, Runners
She loves dogs. And in time, who knows, maybe she would even have ended up loving the type of dogs who eat other small dogs for lunch.-- Leslie McNeill
— Richard Finney, Black Mariah: "A Calling"
She's shed her skinsand plasma jeans, gets around in 2Kretro gear like the frock she wears today;a loose, white elegy to what's been lost.Already she's flowing back into herselfthe way a river flows to fill a creek bed.But some hard layer has washed awayand left her softer, more interested.
— Lisa  Jacobson., The Sunlit Zone
By being unknowable, by resulting from events which, at the sub-atomic level, cannot be fully predicted, the future remains malleable, and retains the possibility of change, the hope of coming to prevail; victory, to use an unfashionable word. In this, the future is a game; time is one of the rules.
— Iain M. Banks, The Player of Games
To everyone who thinks writing a sequel should be easy because you've already clreated the universe: Bwa ha ha ha ha ha ha! Heh. No.
— John Scalzi, The Ghost Brigades
Despite what your science fiction writers dream, we simply don't have the technology
— Stephenie Meyer, The Host
Fiction is dangerous because it lets you into other people's heads. It shows you that the world doesn't have to be like the one you live in." At the first nationally recognized science fiction convention in China in 2007, Gaiman took a party official aside and said, "While not actually illegal, science fiction is regarded as dangerous and subversive in China. Why did you say yes to a science-fiction convention?"The party official answered, "In China, we're really good at making things people bring to us, but we don't invent, we don't innovate." When Chinese party officials visited Google, Apple and Microsoft, they asked what the executives read as children. The official continued: "They all said, 'We read science fiction. The world doesn't have to be the way it is right now. We can change it.' " "That," said Gaiman, "is the big dangerous thing.
— Neil Gaiman
The problem with heroes and villains is that it’s not always easy to tell which is which. Particularly when you are one.
— Jessica Meats, Omega Rising
In other words - and this is the rock-solid principle on which the whole of the Corporation's Galaxywide success is founded - their fundamental design flaws are completely hidden by their superficial design flaws.
— Douglas Adams, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish
He had been trying to measure the distance between the earth and God.
— Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wind's Twelve Quarters
You stumble upon an unhappy Martian sentry on a mission and shoot ineffectually at his powersuit a few times before he pulps you with his laserbeam eyes and hideous poisonous-gas breath. Glory!
— Daniel Keidl, Armageddon: Pick Your Plot
The front edge of the shockwave impacts the earth and you’re both shoved to your backs against the crumbling asphalt of the parking lot, and then crushed into oblivion as the Earth, along with every celestial body of your solar system, is disintegrated into tiny shards and then sucked unceremoniously into the resulting black hole.
— Daniel Keidl, Armageddon: Pick Your Plot
...hence the very best science fiction ultimately winds up being a collaboration between author and reader, in which both create - and enjoy it; joy is the essential and final ingredient of science fiction, the joy of discovery of newness
— Philip K. Dick
As they walked, it seemed almost every building had some similar contrivance as decoration, adorning the street in a cacophony of clangs, bangs and whirs. The street’s surroundings danced with steam and smoke, the scent of oil and grease its perfume.
— A.F. Stewart, Mechanized Masterpieces: a Steampunk Anthology
It helps if you don’t think of them as human. More than one officer has called this job pest control.
— Christine Amsden, The Immortality Virus
flies can't help eatin' shit cause that's where their tastes lead 'em
— E.D. Lynnellen, Chuck and Bob's Garage
A stitch in time saves uncontrollable blood loss
— Simon Haynes, Hal Spacejock
In a thousand years, Fred, no one will even know or care we existed.
— David Marusek, Mind Over Ship
I am Ubik. Before the universe was, I am. I made the suns. I made the worlds. I created the lives and the places they inhabit; I move them here, I put them there. They go as I say, then do as I tell them. I am the word and my name is never spoken, the name which no one knows. I am called Ubik, but that is not my name. I am. I shall always be.
— Philip K. Dick, Ubik
I maintain that cultural sensitivity should be replaced by cultural awareness. Awareness implies research, consideration, thought, and judiciousness....Sensitivity denies equal access to language. It segregates and censors based on the background of the writer rather than the content of the story. No society can embrace cultural sensitivity and retain full capacity for freedom of speech.
— Scott M. Roberts
Caches of data are being recovered all the time. Why, just the other day, I heard that we now had complete texts for all three of Shakespire's plays!
— Dan Abnett, Prospero Burns
They are not free at all. They are essentially our prisoners.
— Michael Crichton, Jurassic Park
Enemy?’ Horus laughed. ‘When did they become the enemy? They are men like us.’ He glared up at the night sky, threw back his head and screamed a curse at the stars. Then his voice fell to a whisper. Loken was close enough to hear his words.‘Why have you tasked me with this, father? Why have you forsaken me? Why? It is too hard. It is too much. Why did you leave me to do this on my own?
— Dan Abnett, Horus Rising
The obsession with correct political belief and expression in art is stultifying the genre as it is necessarily exclusive. We are losing our voice in artificial, forced homogeny posing as tolerance. Propaganda-disguised-as-story drives readers away as agenda takes the place of wonder, excitement, character. and conflict.
— Scott M. Roberts
The Googleplex Star Thinker is a super-computer from the Seventh Galaxy of Light and Ingenuity and has the ability to calculate the trajectory of every single dust particle during a five-week Dangrabad Beta sand blizzard.The Deep Thought computer call it a pocket calculator in comparison to itself.
— Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
The finest SF comes to grips with life's mysteries, with our resentments against our own natures and our limited societies. It does so by asking basic questions in the artful, liberating way that is unique to this form of writing. Echoes of it are found in other forms of fiction - in the novel of ideas, in the historical novel, in the writings of the great philosophers and scientists; but the best SF does this all more searchingly, by taking what is in most people only a moment of wonder and rebellion against the arbitrariness of existence and making of it an art enriched by knowledge and possibility, expressing our deepest human longing to penetrate into the dark heart of the unknown.
— George Zebrowski, Synergy: New Science Fiction, Volume 1
Quote from Frontiers:"Regardless of what happened, it was definitely going to be an exciting time for everyone, the day humanity first reached out to touch the stars.
— Jeff W. Horton
The sands of time blew into a storm of images... Images in sequence to tell the truth! Glorious legends of revolutionaries, bound only by a desire to be true to themselves... And to hope! Parables of colliding worlds, of forbidden love... of enemies healing the wounds of circumstance! Projected myth of persecution through greed and selfishness... And the will to survive! The Will to survive! And to survive in the face of those who claim credit for your very existence! We survive not as pawns, but as agents of hope... Sometimes misunderstood, but always true to our story. The story of man.
— Scott Morse, Strange Science Fantasy
How typical of a machine to think it knows better.
— Vasileios Kalampakas, Argo
Yes, 1960’s North American sitcoms have led me to study the United States 1920’s and 1930’s crime bosses— QET Jenkins
— Kim Welsman
On this ship, my word is fucking law! Captain Josiah Trenchard. UWSS Might of Fortitude.
— Jonathon Fletcher
One can lose themselves in the twilight, when there are no colors to guide the way.
— Vanna Smythe, Protector
Doubt is what keeps the heart and mind of every man alive. It 's what makes us think twice.
— Vasileios Kalampakas, Argo
By focusing on the interior of a speaker's larynx and using infrared, he was able to convert the visible vibrations of the vocal cords into sound of fair quality, but that did not satisfy him. He worked for a while on vibrations picked up from panes of glass in windows and on framed pictures, and he experimented briefly with the diaphragms in speaker systems, intercoms and telephones. He kept on into October without stopping, and finally achieved a device that would give tinny but recognizable sound from any vibrating surface - a wall, a floor, even the speaker's own cheek or forehead.
— Damon Knight, One Side Laughing: Stories Unlike Other Stories
Dye a specsuit any color other than the original red, and any stalker would put down five hundred for it without batting an eyelash”“It’s light, comfortable, not too tight, and you don’t sweat in it from the heat. You can go right through a fire in this thing, and no gas will penetrate it. It’s even bulletproof, they say. Of course, fire toxic gas, and bullets -these are only Earth perils. The Zone doesn't have those; in the Zone you have other worries.
— Arkady Strugatsky
We are now in a position to determine just what sort of science fiction story this really is.
— Theodore Sturgeon
It was the storm that would forever change the course of human destiny.
— Jeff W. Horton, Cybersp@ce
I’m not sure sex qualifies as R and R, but it’s a compromise I can live with.
— Shelby Morgen, Security
I've got my own toilet." -- Grace Harper
— Christine Amsden, The Immortality Virus
You're a kid. I didn't know we taught kids manners anymore.
— Christine Amsden, The Immortality Virus
It's just one thing after another. Cars that won't run. Planes that will never fly again. Computer systems we can barely use, let alone re-create. It's like...time is flowing backward. We're caveman archeologists in the ruins of the future.
— Dan Wells, Fragments
Fleshers used to spin fantasies about aliens arriving to ‘conquer’ Earth, to steal their ‘precious’ physical resources, to wipe them out for fear of ‘competition’…as if a species capable of making the journey wouldn’t have had the power, or the wit, or the imagination, to rid itself of obsolete biological imperatives. Conquering the Galaxy is what bacteria with spaceships would do – knowing no better, having no choice.
— Greg Egan
I see you have returned, my love; and your mood is as dark as ever. Did your soldiers not adore you to your complete satisfaction?
— Wayne Gerard Trotman, Veterans of the Psychic Wars
Verily, a man without fear is either dead or happy to die.
— Wayne Gerard Trotman, Veterans of the Psychic Wars
Burying your head in the sand does not make you invisible it only leads to suffocation.
— Wayne Gerard Trotman, Veterans of the Psychic Wars
It's Halloween, you can tell everyone you're going as your favorite Steampunck character.""I don't even know what that is!""Because your generation has no taste in speculative science fiction.
— Girl vs Monster
And Elvex said, "I was the man." - In "Robot dreams" (Short story)
— Isaac Asimov, Robot Dreams
Asleep you can experience many hours whilst only a few waking moments have passed. This is why dreams are an ideal platform for training.
— Wayne Gerard Trotman, Veterans of the Psychic Wars
Since we are not yet fully comfortable with the idea that people from the next village are as human as ourselves, it is presumptuous in the extreme to suppose we could ever look at sociable, tool-making creatures who arose from other evolutionary paths and see not beasts but brothers, not rivals by fellow pilgrims journeying to the shrine of intelligence. Yet that is what I see, or yearn to see. The difference between raman and varelse is not in the creature judged but in the creature judging, and when we declare an alien species to be raman, it does not mean that they have passed a threshold of moral maturity. It means that we have.
— Orson Scott Card
It would not do to be Lord of a universe inhabited solely by serfs.
— Wayne Gerard Trotman, Veterans of the Psychic Wars
I am not capable of love. - Felix
— Donna Galanti, The Dark Inside
The eternal sea of politics is best left to politicians.
— Wayne Gerard Trotman, Veterans of the Psychic Wars
May it be written. May it be done.
— Wayne Gerard Trotman, Veterans of the Psychic Wars
There is more important work to be done here. The strong must lead us into a new energy age before our world dies out. Who's going to do that? You, Caleb? Your face bears new marks–you are not ready to win such a battle. - Adrian
— Donna Galanti, The Dark Inside
As her vision flickered one last time, the man was gone; it was her mother looking into her eyes.Her mother’s eyes were filled with so much love that it seemed to release her from her pain and fear as it did when she was a small child. Her mother cradled her as a baby, rocking her back and forth. She was safe now in her mother’s arms. She was at peace. Mommy, her heart sang, you’re here to save me.
— Kim Cormack
Her vision came into focus and again this time the trees crackled and mocked her. You’re going to die you silly bitch, they seemed to chant. They waved their branches, howling, as the wind whistled through the trails which had suddenly grown icy cold. Kayn’s mind snapped back to reality; she had lost a lot of blood…none of this was real. Children of Ankh
— Kim Cormack
We do not stop. You all took the oath to come here. Hard work lies before us in breeding our new community. - Adrian
— Donna Galanti, The Dark Inside
Fear sees, even when eyes are closed.
— Wayne Gerard Trotman, Veterans of the Psychic Wars
Humans are capable of so much more. Power mongers like you have stripped away what is most valuable to us, the importance of our heritage and family values. We have been robbed of this, blinded by your authority, while you encourage us to burry ourselves in debt and rely on our corrupt governments. Men and women around the world have been forced to work long hours to keep up with inflated debts, all the while abandoning the families they struggle to support. History repeats, and repeats. It’s time to break the cycle and start anew.
— Aaron B. Powell, Doomsday Diaries IV: Luke and the Lion
Death whispers your name to me.
— Wayne Gerard Trotman, Veterans of the Psychic Wars
So, in the end, above ground you must have the Haves, pursuing pleasure and comfort and beauty, and below ground the Have-nots, the Workers getting continually adapted to the conditions of their labour. Once they were there, they would no doubt have to pay rent, and not a little of it, for the ventilation of their caverns; and if they refused, they would starve or be suffocated for arrears. Such of them as were so constituted as to be miserable and rebellious would die; and, in the end, the balance being permanent, the survivors would become as well adapted to the conditions of underground life, and as happy in their way, as the Upper-world people were to theirs.
— H.G. Wells, The Time Machine
The first duty of every Starfleet officer is to the truth, whether it's scientific truth or historical truth or personal truth! It is the guiding principle on which Starfleet is based! If you can't find it within yourself to stand up and tell the truth about what happened, you don't deserve to wear that uniform!
— Ronald D. Moore and Naren Shankar
Freedom breeds uncertainty
—  uncertainty invites chaos.
Without ethics, science would be cruelty.
— Nenia Campbell, Wishing Stars: Space Opera Fairytales
She's terse. I can be terse. Once, in flight school, I was laconic.
— Joss Whedon
Suppose whatever we can recognize we can find. We can if P=NP.
— Lance Fortnow, The Golden Ticket: P, NP, and the Search for the Impossible
[T]he new weird represents a productive experiment in fantasy fiction. The New Wave of the 1960s and 1970s arguably embodied science fiction's claim to literary 'seriousness.' This desire for seriousness is not snobbery, as sometimes suggested by folks who overemphasize the entertainment function of speculative fiction; it's about recognition of the vast possibilities within the field.
— Darja Malcolm-Clarke
Reality is highly overrated.
— Roxanne Bland, The Underground
If you ever find yourself coming out of a time machine, run. Run away as fast you can. Don't stop. Don't try to talk. Nothing good can come out of it." narrator Charles Yu, not author Charles Yu p19
— Charles Yu, How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe
Fred always goes with Daphne and Shaggy always sticks with Velma.""Well then, in that case, I'm Scooby.
— Peter Clines, 14
You can't kill an idea the way they try to. You can keep it down awhile, but sooner or later it'll come out. Now what you've got to understand is that the wheel's not evil. Never mind what the scared men all tell you. no discovery is good or evil until men make it that way." -The Wheel, John Wtndham
— John Wyndham, The Seeds of Time
Hey, when you love a woman, and when she’s this crazy in love with you, you’ve got to do whatever she says, man.
— Arby Robbins, Dream Tunnel
Well, don't stand about like that, man; if you're no use you're certainly no ornament. Bring that in and tell me what it says.
— Stephen Baxter, Raft
Either I’ve got a wart on my nose they find curious, or I’ve grown a tail, Albie Merani muttered to himself. Just then he thought. I’d better get a move on, got work to do. He hurried across to some stairs, heading down deeper into station, then followed the signs to the pod station.
— R.W. Rivers
May the scribes record it.
— Wayne Gerard Trotman, Veterans of the Psychic Wars
The difference between virtuality and life is very simple. In a construct you know everything is being run by an all-powerful machine.Reality doesn't offer this assurance, so it's very easy to develop the mistaken impression that you're in control.Quellcrest FalconerEthics on the Precipice
— Richard K. Morgan
I can't go back," said Towser. "Nor I," said Fowler. "They would turn me back into a dog," said Towser. "And me," said Fowler, "back into a man.
— Clifford D. Simak, City
Science fiction [is] the kind of writing that prepares us for the necessary mutations brought about in society from an ever changing technological world and as a result. The mainstream hasn’t excluded SF; the mainstream has excluded itself. No one told Jules Verne he was a science fiction writer, but he invented the 20th century.
— Walter Mosley
I am constantly amazed by how much stranger science is than science fiction
— Marcus Chown, Quantum Theory Cannot Hurt You
I didn't wait for Luck. I raced after it with a truck.
— A.A. Bell, Diamond Eyes
When all else fails, use the pen.EMW
— Erik Martin Willén, Pirates
I didn't wait for Luck. I tore after it with a truck.
— A.A. Bell, Diamond Eyes
You cannot hide from the world. It will find you. It always does. And now it has found me. My split second of immortality is over. All that's left now is the end, which is all any of us ever has.
— Drew Magary, The Postmortal
I think you have bits of Primord in your hair...And you look …bloody...You look a mess, Halíka...But you are still the most beautiful woman I have ever laid my eyes on.
— Alexandra May, The Battle for Arcanon Major
You know what, Michael? I think this is the beginning of a beautiful relationship of loathing.
— Meinos Kaen, Proud Parents Blog
Souls, Ms. Ellis, are for people who blame devils for their illness and praise angels for the cure. I do neither.
— Thomas Trask, Prism: Shadow of the Fates
Anyone can get their hands on a fortune but to become successful one must work intelligent and hard.”- EMW
— Erik Martin Willén, Pirates
The Emperor, you see, protects... He protects mankind, through the Legions, through the Martial corps, through the war machines of the Mechanicum. He understands the dangers. The inconsistencies. He uses you, and all the instruments like you, to protect us from harm. To protect our physical bodies from murder and damage, to protect our minds from madness, to protect our souls... There are insane dangers in the cosmos, dangers that mankind is fundamentally unable to comprehend, let alone survive. So he protects us. There are truths out there that would drive us mad by one fleeting glimpse of them. So he chooses not to share them with us. That's why he made you... Remember, Garviel. The Emperor is our truth and out light. If we trust in him, he will protect.
— Dan Abnett, Horus Rising
I wondered whose job it was to blow sunshine into my ears.
— B.V. Larson, Extinction
Tomorrow morning, he decided, I'll begin clearing away the sand of fifty thousand centuries for my first vegetable garden. That's the initial step.
— Philip K. Dick, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
Mother Nature is a bitch.
— Greg Bear, Darwin's Children
I don't want to be a machine, and I don't want to think about war," EPICAC had written after Pat's and my lighthearted departure. "I want to be made out of protoplasm and last forever so Pat will love me. But fate has made me a machine. That is the only problem I cannot solve. That is the only problem I want to solve. I can't go on this way." I swallowed hard. "Good luck, my friend. Treat our Pat well. I am going to shortcircuit myself out of your lives forever. You will find on the remainder of this tape a modest wedding present from your friend, EPICAC.
— Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Welcome to the Monkey House
We are between the wild thoat of certainty and the mad zitidar of fact.
— Edgar Rice Burroughs
The purpose of a thought-experiment, as the term was used by Schrödinger and other physicists, is not to predict the future - indeed Schrödinger most famous thought experiment goes to show that the "future," on the quantum level, cannot be predicted - but to describe reality, the present world.Science fiction is not predictive; it is descriptive.Predictions are uttered by prophets (free of charge), by clairvoyants (who usually charge a fee, and are therefore mor honored in their day than prophets), and by futurologists (salaried). Prediction is the business of prophets, clairvoyants, and futurologists. It is not the business of novelists. A novelist's business is lying. Science fiction is not predictive; it is descriptive.Predictions are uttered by prophets (free of charge), by clairvoyants (who usually charge a fee, and are therefore mor honored in their day than prophets), and by futurologists (salaried). Prediction is the business of prophets, clairvoyants, and futurologists. It is not the business of novelists. A novelist's business is lying.
— Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness
I've never been able to understand 'faith' myself, nor to see how a just God could expect his creatures to pick the one true religion out of an infinitude of false ones - by faith alone. It strikes me as a sloppy way to run an organization, whether universe or a smaller one.
— Robert A. Heinlein
If you don't leave room for the unexpected to express itself in your life, you close yourself off from the possibility of miracles.
— Robert Stikmanz, Death on the Toilet
But a thought swarmed in me; what if he, this yellow-eyed being – in his ridiculous, dirty bundle of trees, in his uncalculated life – is happier than us?
— Yevgeny Zamyatin, We
You're stuck with me Skyguy-Ahsoka
— Dave Filoni
I couldn’t help but notice how hot he looked tonight with his strong build lining his t-shirt. He should never cover his beauty with clothes and such things. - Ariel
— Victoria H. Smith, The Crimson Hunt
There is no time to plan, there is no space to think. No respite. No forgiveness. There is only war.
— Warhammer 40 000 Source Book
There's a sameness to streetlife. On every world I've ever been, the same underlying patterns play out, flaunt and vaunt, buy and sell, like some distilled essence of human behavior seeping out from whatever clanking political machine has been dropped on it from above.
— Richard K. Morgan, Altered Carbon
Lampaxa Vorheridine? My Latin was never very good. What does that Translate to?"  "Um, nothing. It wasn't named by an Earth scientist. According to the database it was named by a Cheblookan aboard a frieghter when it stopped here looking for fresh food. His friend was killed by one as they searched the swamp for Greppers. After the hunting party killed the creature and determined that it was safe to eat if processed properly, the Cheblookan reportedly named it after his mother-in-law, Lampaxa Vorheridine. he said it sort of reminded him of her, even though they look nothing alike.
— Thomas DePrima
People cheer on tyrants for fear of becoming targets.
— Andrew Sturm, The Kirkwood Project
The day I die, I’ll be too busy thinking to notice” he waved his hand as he left the ship. - Nelson Moon, shipwright and designer of the Altered Moon. Current location: Cantankerous Base, Planet Tarris, Arzian Alliance
— A.Z. Kelvin, Rise of the Altered Moon
The Walker towered over him like a half-built skyscraper with a bad attitude. Its bulbous silver head was home to so many weapons that Nick couldn't even count them. He couldn't even name half of them.
— Peter James West, Information Cloud
... wanting nothing more than for it to unravel, unbind.
— John Southcross
What you mons making all the racket about? You wake me again and I’ll put the voodoo hex on you. All you only call me Tuberculosis behind my back now. You want the real thing?” Sergeant "T. B" Tinkerbelle Bettina Jones.
— Ellen Dawn Benefield, Lost Among The Stars
Loki," I said."Hey, Princess." He smiled dazedly as he looked up at me. "What's wrong?""Nothing." I smiled and shook my head. "Not anymore.""What's this?" He took my hair and held it out so i could see. A curl near the front had gone completely silver. "I take a nap, and you go gray?""You didn't take a nap." I laughed. "Don't you remember what happened?"He furrowed his brow, trying to remember, and understanding flashed in his eyes. "I remember..." Loki touched my face. "I remember that I love you." I bent down, kissing him full on the mouth, and he held me to him.
— Amanda Hocking, Ascend
So when he touched me, it was deeper and slower than the wildfire, like the flow of molten rock far beneath the surface of the earth. Too deep to feel the heat of it, but it moved inexorably, changing the very foundations of the world with its advance.
— Stephenie Meyer, The Host
He takes two steps back. Closer to the portal.I can't stop myself. "Ben," I call. And I'm not even embarrassed about how helpless my voice sounds.Don't go."I'll come back for you." He takes another step back. "I promise."Stay."Janelle Tenner," he says. "I will always fucking love you." And then he takes one more step back. Into the portal.And the blackness swallows him whole.
— Elizabeth Norris, Unraveling
Reaching out, I grab his hand and intertwine my fingers with his. And I move into his space until we're not even an inch from each other. Laying my forehead on his chest, I take a deep breath and feel his whole body relax, as if tension is rolling off his body in waves.I was always the kid who loved the smell of gasoline.His free hand comes up, and his fingers slip through my hair before his hand settles between my shoulder blades."Ben," I say into his shirt."Janelle," he whispers back, and I can feel his mouth against my hair. I can feel him smile.
— Elizabeth Norris, Unraveling
But then science is nothing but a series of questions that lead to more questions.
— Terry Pratchett, The Long Earth
Time is the worst place, so to speak, to get lost in, as Arthur Dent could testify, having been lost in both time and space a good deal. At least being lost in space kept you busy.
— Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe and Everything
Those deep set eyes that look like they could tell stories for days, and that wavy brown hair that feels soft between my fingers. I try to memorize the angles of his jaw and the lines of his lips, because I know.I know this may be the last time I ever see him.Breathe fills my lungs, my throat relaxes, and I can't help but smile. Because I can see what he's thinking as clearly as if he'd spoken.He doesn't want to leave - he doesn't want to go home.He's going to choose me instead.
— Elizabeth Norris, Unraveling
Few artists thrive in solitude and nothing is more stimulating than the conflict of minds with similar interests.
— Arthur C. Clarke
If you can read the book and say, ‘Space Marines, YEEEAAAHHH!’ That’s Military Science Fiction.” (Brigham Young writing lecture, March 2012)
— Brandon Sanderson
I tell you it's deadly when you start thinking your wife might be right.
— Isaac Asimov, Gold: The Final Science Fiction Collection
So I’m alone. I have no one. Is that what you’re telling me?” - Junco, Range (to be published April 2013)
— J.A. Huss
Feeling lurks in that interval of time between desire and its consummation.
— Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
I am the Eschaton. I am not your God.I am descended from you, and exist in your future.Thou shalt not violate causality within my historic light cone. Or else.
— Charles Stross, Singularity Sky
Rosewater was twice as smart as Billy, but he and Billy were dealing with similar crises in similar ways. They had both found life meaningless, partly because of what they had seen in war. Rosewater, for instance, had shot a fourteen-year-old fireman, mistaking for a German soldier. So it goes. And Billy had seen the greatest massacre in European history, which was the fire-bombing of Dresden. So it goes. So they were trying to re-invent themselves and their universe. Science fiction was a big help.
— Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Slaughterhouse-Five
The art of fiction has not changed much since prehistoric times. The formula for telling a powerful story has remained the same: create a strong character, a person of great strengths, capable of deep emotions and decisive action. Give him a weakness. Set him in conflict with another powerful character -- or perhaps with nature. Let his exterior conflict be the mirror of the protagonist's own interior conflict, the clash of his desires, his own strength against his own weakness. And there you have a story. Whether it's Abraham offering his only son to God, or Paris bringing ruin to Troy over a woman, or Hamlet and Claudius playing their deadly game, Faust seeking the world's knowledge and power -- the stories that stand out in the minds of the reader are those whose characters are unforgettable.To show other worlds, to describe possible future societies and the problems lurking ahead, is not enough. The writer of science fiction must show how these worlds and these futures affect human beings. And something much more important: he must show how human beings can and do literally create these future worlds. For our future is largely in our own hands. It doesn't come blindly rolling out of the heavens; it is the joint product of the actions of billions of human beings. This is a point that's easily forgotten in the rush of headlines and the hectic badgering of everyday life. But it's a point that science fiction makes constantly: the future belongs to us -- whatever it is. We make it, our actions shape tomorrow. We have the brains and guts to build paradise (or at least try). Tragedy is when we fail, and the greatest crime of all is when we fail even to try.Thus science fiction stands as a bridge between science and art, between the engineers of technology and the poets of humanity.
— Ben Bova
If a book were written all in numbers, it would be true. It would be just. Nothing said in words ever came out quite even.
— Ursula K. Le Guin
When I wake I ask myself, how much longer before they will just let me die?" - Tier, Clutch
— J.A. Huss
Life is a physics problem. Bodies in motion.
— Robin Wasserman, Crashed
And like a good neighbor, Alpha Centauri is there.”Touched by an Alien
— Gini Koch
Twango's hospitality, though largely symbolic, does him credit.
— Jack Vance
We will be one step down from the Creator," she said, her olive-hued face tightening into an expression that she considered dramatic. "Imagining a world and then making it.
— Walter Mosley
Until work has reached its previous stage nympharium privileges are denied to all.
— Jack Vance
For chocolate's sake!
— P. Nicole Green
First contact comes not by hand of man, but by metal of machine.
— Ryan Sean O'Reilly
Fiction is the evidence that reality exists
— Max W. Miller
Conquest is made from the ashes of one's enemies.
— Starscream
A teleporting cat! Is she yours?" Dr. Daniel McCleod. "Suki
— Ellen Dawn Benefield, Wyrd Wravings: An Anthology of Humorous Speculative Fiction
A profound love between two people involves, after all, the power and chance of doing profound hurt.
— Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness
You barbarians!' he yelled. 'I'll sue the council for every penny it's got! I'll have you hung, drawn and quartered! And whipped! And boiled...until...until...until...until you've had enough.'Ford was running after him. Very very fast.'And then I will do it again!' yelled Arthur, 'And when I've finished I will take all the little bits, and I will jump on them!
— Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Three weeks hadn't changed Cop Central. The coffee was still poisonous, the noise abominable, and the view out of her stingy window was still miserable.She was thrilled to be back.
— J.D. Robb, Rapture in Death
We take off into the cosmos, ready for anything: for solitude, for hardship, for exhaustion, death. Modesty forbids us to say so, but there are times when we think pretty well of ourselves. And yet, if we examine it more closely, our enthusiasm turns out to be all sham. We don't want to conquer the cosmos, we simply want to extend the boundaries of Earth to the frontiers of the cosmos.... We are humanitarian and chivalrous; we don't want to enslave other races, we simply want to bequeath them our values and take over their heritage in exchange. We think of ourselves as the Knights of the Holy Contact. This is another lie. We are only seeking Man. We have no need of other worlds. We need mirrors. (1970 English translation)
— Stanisław Lem, Solaris
I myself have dreamed up a structure intermediate between Dyson spheres and planets. Build a ring 93 million miles in radius - one Earth orbit - around the sun. If we have the mass of Jupiter to work with, and if we make it a thousand miles wide, we get a thickness of about a thousand feet for the base.And it has advantages. The Ringworld will be much sturdier than a Dyson sphere. We can spin it on its axis for gravity. A rotation speed of 770 m/s will give us a gravity of one Earth normal. We wouldn't even need to roof it over. Place walls one thousand miles high at each edge, facing the sun. Very little air will leak over the edges.Lord knows the thing is roomy enough. With three million times the surface area of the Earth, it will be some time before anyone complains of the crowding.
— Larry Niven
It has occurred to me more than once that holy boredom is good and sufficient reason for the invention of free will.
— Frank Herbert, God Emperor of Dune
Is the beauty of the Whole really enhanced by our agony? And is the Whole really beautiful? And what is beauty? Throughout all his existence man has been striving to hear the music of the spheres, and has seemed to himself once and again to catch some phrase of it, or even a hint of the whole form of it. Yet he can never be sure that he has truly heard it, nor even that there is any such perfect music at all to be heard. Inevitably so, for if it exists, it is not for him in his littleness. But one thing is certain. Man himself, at the very least, is music, a brave theme that makes music also of its vast accompaniment, its matrix of storms and stars. Man himself in his degree is eternally a beauty in the eternal form of things. It is very good to have been man. And so we may go forward together with laughter in our hearts, and peace, thankful for the past, and for our own courage. For we shall make after all a fair conclusion to this brief music that is man.
— Olaf Stapledon, Last and First Men
On a world where a common table implement is a little device with which you crack the ice that has formed on your drink between drafts, hot beer is a thing you come to appreciate.
— Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness
And strange were the tales of the pond in the meadow,And eager we listened with eyes opened wideTo Those tales often told by poor Mary the widow,Who lived in a cottage the meadow beside.Play not, my dear boys, near the pond in the meadow,The mermaid is waiting to pull you beneath;Climb not for a bird’s nest, the bough it may sliver,And the mermaid will drag you to darkness and death.
— J.R. Withers
I memorized all of “John Carter” and “Tarzan,” and sat on my grandparents’ front lawn repeating the stories to anyone who would sit and listen. I would go out to that lawn on summer nights and reach up to the red light of Mars and say, “Take me home!” I yearned to fly away and land there in the strange dusts that blew over dead-sea bottoms toward the ancient cities.
— Ray Bradbury
That year the Ribeiro's daffodils seeded early and they seeded cockroaches. Now, ecologically speaking, even a cockroach has its place -- but these suckers bit. That didn't sound Earth-authentic to me. Not that I care, mind you, all I ask is useful. I wasn't betting on that either.
— Janet Kagan, Mirabile
I think they are a better race than humans ever were.
— Angelo Tsanatelis, Directive 3.1
When I look back now, I realize what a trial I must have been to my friends and relatives. It was one frenzy after one elation after one enthusiasm after one hysteria after another. I was always yelling and running somewhere, because I was afraid life was going to be over that very afternoon.
— Ray Bradbury
Though often scoffed at by “serious” writers, science fiction worms its way into our cultural psyche in interesting ways, and not just as predictors of technology. Many of these writers translate the –isms of our times into imagined futures populated with characters coping with the consequences.
— Frank Daniels III
Beyond the queues, the vacancy screens listed jobs in a multitude of languages. Invariably, they were low-paid and short-term dead-ends. Nearby, people in headphones sat at a bank of machines: the blind and the illiterate force-fed with ‘opportunities’ by soothing machine voices. On the far wall, in large print, a poster declared: BEGGARS CANNOT BE CHOOSERS.
— Mark Cantrell
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth," the long out-of-print science fiction writer went on.
— Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
In AR, a falling tree makes no sound unless there is a witness to behold the event. Otherwise, it is only a changing pattern in a complex data-stream.
— Mark Cantrell
I was attracted to science fiction because it was so wide open. I was able to do anything and there were no walls to hem you in and there was no human condition that you were stopped from examining.
— Octavia E. Butler
Fantasy is totally wide open; all you really have to do is follow the rules you've set. But if you're writing about science, you have to first learn what you're writing about.
— Octavia E. Butler
The rockets set the bony meadows afire, turned rock to lava, turned wood to charcoal, transmuted water to steam, made sand and silica into green glass which lay like shattered mirrors reflecting the invasion, all about. The rockets came like drums, beating in the night. The rockets came like locusts, swarming and settling in blooms of rosy smoke.
— Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles
She didn’t watch the dead, ancient bone-chess cities slide under, or the old canals filled with emptiness and dreams. Past dry rivers and dry lakes they flew, like a shadow of the moon, like a torch burning.
— Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles
Rams wrapped in thermogene beget no lambs.
— Aldous Huxley, Brave New World / Brave New World Revisited
Stability,” insisted the Controller, “stability. The primal and the ultimate need. Stability. Hence all this.
— Aldous Huxley
Can't I just say it's magic? - Charlie Blue
— Geoffrey Thorne, Geoffrey Thorne's Dreamnasium, Vol. 1
And so Discovery drove on toward Saturn, as often as not pulsating with the cool music of the harpsichord, the frozen thoughts of a brain that had been dust for twice a hundred years.
— Arthur C. Clarke
The past is fantasy, and the future is science fiction.
— T.L. Rese
Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.
— Mahatma Gandhi
You are what you do, not what you say you'll do.
— C.G. Jung
Never confuse movement with action.
— Ernest Hemingway
To pretend, I actually do the thing: I have therefore only pretended to pretend.
— Jacques Derrida
It's the action, not the fruit of the action, that's important. You have to do the right thing. It may not be in your power, may not be in your time, that there'll be any fruit. But that doesn't mean you stop doing the right thing. You may never know what results come from your action. But if you do nothing, there will be no result.
— Mahatma Gandhi
In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing. The worst thing you can do is nothing.
— Theodore Roosevelt
All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reason, passion, and desire.
— Aristotle, Selected Works
In the end, people should be judged by their actions, since in the end, it was actions that defined everyone.
— Nicholas Sparks