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Science Fiction Quotes

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Science Fiction Quotes

“The machines of this place are failing, and the woman and I are here all alone. The perpetual motion engine, as brilliant and beautiful as it is, is running down—nothing lasts forever. But before this little world falls out of the sky there still might be time enough for redemption. There is still time for me to say the words that I should have had the courage to say at the beginning. There is still time, perhaps, for one more miracle. Hello, Miranda.”

“Just because your electronics are better than ours, you aren't necessarily superior in any way. Look, imagine that you humans are a man in LA with a brand-new Trujillo and we are a nuhp in New York with a beat-up old Ford. The two fellows start driving toward St. Louis. Now, the guy in the Trujillo is doing 120 on the interstates, and the guy in the Ford is putting along at 55; but the human in the Trujillo stops in Vegas and puts all of his gas money down the hole of a blackjack table, and the determined little nuhp cruises along for days until at last he reaches his goal. It's all a matter of superior intellect and the will to succeed. Your people talk a lot about going to the stars, but you just keep putting your money into other projects, like war and popular music and international athletic events and resurrecting the fashions of previous decades. If you wanted to go into space, you would have.”

“Did the Ancient Hainish postulate that continuous sexual capacity and organized social aggression, neither of which are attributes of any mammal but man, are cause and effect? Or, like Tumass Song Angot, did they consider war to be a purely masculine displacement-activity, a vast Rape, and therefore in their experiment eliminate the masculinity that rapes and the femineity that is Raped? God knows.”

“Did you ever feel this way? Did you ever feel a thousand words swimming through your veins, but they never slowed down enough for you to catch a few? Did you ever stare endlessly at a page, unable to find the words you could feel in your heart? A bird is singing above me. It always knows the song it wants to share with the world. Just like the song I heard at school—written by a boy whose violin is all he needs to create an entire story. I keep trying to keep pieces of you alive. I want to write the way you wrote. But I’m not you. And I’m not him. And I’m not a bird.”

“Family is only the tribe in microcosm. Long ago Thoacdiens realized—since their business is information, and information is not static—that, technology aside, the prime source of their capital was the unbridled imagination of each individual in each successive generation. The family is not only an inefficient system, it is a cruel one. The whole object of the family is to repeat itself, to create the future in the image of the past. Consequently it is a very effective brake on change because it keeps all children within the boundaries of cultural tradition. In the family learning is a process of psychological brutality at the end of which a child knows nothing but what is permissible to the tribe. There is no future, and no joy in the family—only the long, agonized, destructive groan of the continual death of the past. Once in a while there is friendship, but that is the exception, not the rule.”

“Hello, my name is Marcos, I am a naturalized urban writer of Argentine nationality. I have bad news for you! Amazon removed my works from the platform because I promoted my new books on other platforms and not with them, but it doesn't matter, despite not having received a cent from them for two years, I have good news! I have 150 works available on my fandom page: novels and stories of horror, mystery, suspense, science fiction, romance, poems and thoughts, stories for children and critical political thinking. I thank everyone and you can visit me.”

“I think of James’ approach to Juno’s sadness, and I see something that stirs within me a secondhand embarrassment. A constant asking of questions, a somewhat annoyance when Juno doesn’t answer them entirely—I cringe at it. However, it makes sense. They are twins; they live together, go home together, eat together … they are constantly around one another. For James, living with this observation that your twin sister is clearly not okay and not receiving much of an explanation for any of it must feel draining. It must be annoying; he must be fed up with the confusion it all causes. I agree—I hate the confusion caused by an absence of understanding or explanation of an issue that you’re incredibly concerned about, although the issues at hand are different: one dealing with a sibling’s depression and the other dealing with someone’s own recollection of their past.”

“Well, I bet one-hundred gold pieces, as well as my freedom, that you cannot drink a jug of milk as you can a jug of ale.” Finn’s tail twitched as he waited for the sheepdog’s response. “Ha! I shall take your bet! Innkeeper, grab me a jug of milk the same size as this jug of ale. I will show you Mister Finn, that I am Butch the Thirsty, as well as Butch the Hungry!”

“He ran away a lot after that, still trying to find something exciting to make life less dull. His parents always said he was never satisfied, and would never be satisfied even if he found what he was looking for. Duncan hoped that wasn't true, but he wasn't sure. Taylor walked alongside Duncan, stepping on all of the fallen autumn leaves, and Duncan was sure it was a new song creating itself. That's how Taylor was. He heard music in the wind and in the crunch of leaves and new songs were growing out of his ears and Duncan was lost. That was it, he realized. Lost.”

“Sometimes, I can’t separate the reality from dream or illusion. Sometimes, I get so tired thinking about what if I’m not really here and all the good things happened in my life were just a mirage.” “I guess you feel it when you reach some sort of pleasure?” “True. I’m suffering from the fear of losing happiness. The fear that the moments of joy to be taken away from me and be replaced by a tragedy” “Cherophobia. That’s what it’s called.” She glanced at my face “Yeah. That’s what the shrink said” “I’ll cure your fear” “How?” “By eternal life”

“She might not have read many books. But when she reads a book, she swallows the very words. If you open the books on her shelves, you will find that the front and back covers encase white pages.”

“I believe that humans are on an evolutionary path where brain usage will escalate beyond the current 10% standard, and as we evolve, so will our “ESP” abilities. Today, more and more children are born already possessing these abilities, and it’s appropriate we adjust to the new world reality already happening.”

“A história de todas as grandes civilizações galácticas tende a passar por três fases distintas e identificáveis: a da Sobrevivência, a da Interrogação e a da Sofisticação, também conhecidas pelas fases Como, Porquê e Onde. Por exemplo, a primeira fase é caracterizada pela pergunta "Como vamos comer?", a segunda pela pergunta "Por que comemos?" e a terceira pela pergunta "Onde vamos almoçar?".”

“Bowman was aware of some changes in his behavior patterns; it would have been absurd to expect anything else in the circumstances. He could no longer tolerate silence; except when he was sleeping, or talking over the circuit to Earth, he kept the ship's sound system running at almost painful loudness. / At first, needing the companionship of the human voice, he had listened to classical plays--especially the works of Shaw, Ibsen, and Shakespeare--or poetry readings from Discovery's enormous library of recorded sounds. The problems they dealt with, however, seemed so remote, or so easily resolved with a little common sense, that after a while he lost patience with them. / So he switched to opera--usually in Italian or German, so that he was not distracted even by the minimal intellectual content that most operas contained. This phase lasted for two weeks before he realized that the sound of all these superbly trained voices was only exacerbating his loneliness. But what finally ended this cycle was Verdi's Requiem Mass, which he had never heard performed on Earth. The "Dies Irae," roaring with ominous appropriateness through the empty ship, left him completely shattered; and when the trumpets of Doomsday echoed from the heavens, he could endure no more. / Thereafter, he played only instrumental music. He started with the romantic composers, but shed them one by one as their emotional outpourings became too oppressive. Sibelius, Tchaikovsky, Berlioz, lasted a few weeks, Beethoven rather longer. He finally found peace, as so many others had done, in the abstract architecture of Bach, occasionally ornamented with Mozart. / 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.”

“Father! Father!' the boy called repeatedly, but the man remained lifeless in his arms. The horrified boy felt hopeless, deprived of any basis for understanding as to what had happened. Now he was left alone, without answers or any help, desperate to do something to help his father. Tierney didn’t know what to do. Confused and terrified, the boy cradled his father’s limp body in his arms and wept bitterly.”

“The fact that you can't see how much you're worth makes you worth so much more." She opened her mouth once, her brow bunched, but nothing came out. She didn't know the words to ask. I continued. "A diamond doesn't know how much it's worth; it's just beautiful because it exists.”