These have nothing in common, except that I liked them for one reason or another.
"My feeling is that until the number of whole lives is greater than the number of shattered lives, we remain stuck in some kind of prehistory, unworthy of humanity's great spirit. History as a story worth telling will only begin when the whole lives outnumber the wasted ones. That means we have many generations to go before history begins. All the inequalities must end; all the surplus wealth must be equitably distributed. Until then we are still only some kind of gibbering monkey, and humanity, as we usually like to think of it, does not yet exist."
"It takes courage to keep love at the centre when you know just as well as anyone else the real state of the world! It's easy to get angry, anybody can do that. It's staying hopeful that's hard. It's making good that's hard. It's staying in love that's the hard part."
The Years of Rice & Salt, by Kim Stanley Robinson.
"Some would ask, how could a perfect God create a universe filled with so much that is evil. They have missed a greater conundrum: why would a perfect God create a universe at all?"
"I sit in my cubicle, here on the motherworld.
When I die, they will put my body in a box and dispose of it in the cold ground.
And in all the million ages to come, I will never breathe or laugh or twitch again.
So won't you run and play with me here among the teeming mass of humanity?
The universe has spared us this moment."
Alpha Centauri. A full list of quotes is here.
"I come from Des Moines. Somebody had to."
Bill Bryson, in The Lost Continent
"Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherf****r in the world. If I moved to a martial-arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family was wiped out by Colombian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, and devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I just dropped out and devoted my life to being bad. Hiro used to feel this way, too, but then he ran into Raven. In a way, this was liberating. He no longer has to worry about being the baddest motherf****r in the world. The position is taken."
Neal Stephenson, in Snow Crash
""I killed them. I exterminated them. Down to the last man. Now, Integra, give me your orders. The higher-ups of the police force are probably controlled by them. However....the ones who were following their orders to break in here....the ones I killed, and will try to kill again, are just typical ignorant humans.
"I can kill them. I can massacre them without even a bit of hesitation, an ounce of regret. Because I am a monster. Now, regarding you, Miss Integra. I will wield the gun. I will also determine it's aim. I will put the ammo in the magazine, pull the slide and even undo the safety. But....what will kill them is your intent.
"So, what are my orders?"
Hellsing (the manga)
Last edited by Elemental on 18 Apr 2007, 1:10 pm, edited 2 times in total.
15 Apr 2007, 2:21 am
