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I Quotes

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All I Quotes

“If I – as a beneficiary of that exact formula – will concede that my own life was indeed enriched by that precise familial structure, will the social conservatives please (for once!) concede that this arrangement has always put a disproportionately cumbersome burden on women? Such a system demands that mothers become selfless to the point of near invisibility in order to construct these exemplary encironments for their families. And might those same social conservatives – instead of just praising mothers as “sacred” and “noble” – be willing to someday join a larger conversation about how we might work together as a society to construct a world where healthy children can be raised and healthy families can prosper without women have to scrape bare the walls of their own souls to do so?”

“If I, as a child, claim that something awful has happened—that someone has done something terrible to me—and everyone around me acts as if nothing is the matter, then either I must be crazy, or all of them are. And when you’re a kid and your life depends on all these people, there is no choice: of course, I must be crazy.”

“If I as a geologist were called upon to explain briefly our modern ideas of the origin of the earth and the development of life on it to a simple, pas- toral people, such as the tribes to whom the Book of Genesis was addressed, I could hardly do better than follow rather closely much of the language of the first chapter of Genesis.”

“If I ask you who is the most famous scientist who ever lived, or the greatest scientist who ever lived you'll say either Einstein or Newton or something like that because their claims were supposed to apply universally. But the claim of somebody who is studying a particular feature of the evolutionary process like whether it's very fast or very slow, or occurs in steps and so on, that's not a universal claim, that's a rather specialised claim and so you can't claim to great fame and great success.”

“If I asked you to come here again,” he said, “and let me be with you, would you?” There was no hesitation. “Yes.” “Even if things couldn’t be…normal…between us? Sexually speaking.” “Yes.” He frowned. “This is going to come out wrong….” “Which is fine, because I’ve already put my foot in it with you back at the clinic. We’ll just be even.” Rehv had to smile, but the expression didn’t stick. “I have to know…why. Why would you come back.” Ehlena lay back down against the pillows and, in a slow sweep, moved her hand up over the satin sheet that covered her stomach. “I have only one answer to that, but I don’t think it’s going to be what you want to hear.” The cold numbness, which was returning as the remnants of those orgasms he’d had dissipated, sped up its reclamation of his body. Please let it not be pity, he thought. “Tell me.” She was quiet for a long while, her stare shifting out toward the blinking, glowing view of Caldwell’s two halves. “You ask me why I would come back?” she said softly. “And the only answer I have is…how could I not.” Her eyes flipped to his. “It doesn’t make sense to me on some level, but then, feelings don’t make sense, do they? And they don’t have to. Tonight…you gave me things I not only haven’t had for a long time, but I don’t think I’ve ever felt.” She shook her head. “I wrapped up a body yesterday…a body of someone my own age, a body of someone who likely as not had headed out of his house the evening he was killed with no clue that it was his last night. I don’t know where this”—she gestured back and forth between them—“thing with us is going. Maybe it’s just a night or two. Maybe it’s a month. Maybe it’s longer than can be measured by a decade. All I know is, life is too short not to come back here and be with you like this again. Life is just too short, and I like being with you too much for me to give a crap about anything other than having another moment like this.” Rehvenge’s chest swelled as he stared at her. “Ehlena?” “Yeah?” “Don’t take this the wrong way.” She drew in a deep breath and he saw her bare shoulders tighten. “Okay. I’ll try not to.” “You keep showing up here? Being who you are?” There was a pause. “I’m going to fall in love with you.” -Rehv & Ehlena”

“If I asked you to do something for me, I don't suppose you'd listen?" When he had my attention, he continued, "I'm going to take you home. Try to forget tonight happened. Try to act normal, especially around Hank. Don't mention my name." By way of an answer, I shot him a black look and swung out of the Tahoe. He followed suit, coming around to my side. "What kind of answer is that?" He asked, but his voice wasn't nearly so gruff.”

“If I beat my grandmother to death to-morrow in the middle of Battersea Park, you may be perfectly certain that people will say everything about it except the simple and fairly obvious fact that it is wrong. Some will call it insane; that is, will accuse it of a deficiency of intelligence. This is not necessarily true at all. You could not tell whether the act was unintelligent or not unless you knew my grandmother. Some will call it vulgar, disgusting, and the rest of it; that is, they will accuse it of a lack of manners. Perhaps it does show a lack of manners; but this is scarcely its most serious disadvantage. Others will talk about the loathsome spectacle and the revolting scene; that is, they will accuse it of a deficiency of art, or æsthetic beauty. This again depends on the circumstances: in order to be quite certain that the appearance of the old lady has definitely deteriorated under the process of being beaten to death, it is necessary for the philosophical critic to be quite certain how ugly she was before. Another school of thinkers will say that the action is lacking in efficiency: that it is an uneconomic waste of a good grandmother. But that could only depend on the value, which is again an individual matter. The only real point that is worth mentioning is that the action is wicked, because your grandmother has a right not to be beaten to death. But of this simple moral explanation modern journalism has, as I say, a standing fear. It will call the action anything else—mad, bestial, vulgar, idiotic, rather than call it sinful.”

“If I became lost in the multiverse, exploring infinite parallel dimensions, my only criterion for settling down somewhere would be whether or not I could find you: and once I did, I'd stay there even if it was a world ruled by giant spider-priests, or one where killer robots won the Civil War, or even a world where sandwiches were never invented, because you'd make it the best of all possible worlds anyway, and plus we could get rich off inventing sandwiches.”