Elizabeth Bear Quotes

Though I am otherwise relentlessly normal, I have one peculiarity: I get along well only with people who are smarter than me.

- I'm sorry, but I don't know any stories.

The harpy smiles. A harpy's smile is an ugly thing, even seen edge-on. The harpy says, You do not have the power to make me not alone, Desiree.

Memory is a spiderweb. It hangs in a corner and collects dust. Until you need it to catch a fly.

Spurred on by both the science and science fiction of our time, my generation of researchers and engineers grew up to ask what if? and what's next? We went on to pursue new disciplines like computer vision, artificial intelligence, real-time speech translation, machine learning, and quantum computing.

Djinn," she said. "We go to review the troops. Clothe me as befits a queen."
"Silks and satins?" he asked, eyes sparkling like sapphires. "White brocade?"
"Armor," she said. "And flame.

But Doc knew that was the key to successful lying. People judged what other people would do by what they themselves would do. You could tell a hell of a lot about a man by what he assumed others got up to. If you're looking for a thief, bet on the man who's always accusing his neighbors.

So why a woman did the same should be judged different ... well, women always is. Judged different, I mean.

The secret to getting away with lying, is believing with all your heart. That goes for lying to yourself even more so than lying to another

My love is not water in a bucket, you know. It's not as if someone else can drink it all up and leave none left for you.

The older he got, the simpler the world was revealed to be.

I don't know if it was the excitement that did it, but by the time we started our tiptoe across the icy, rutted skid yard to that shed Priya had quit shivering, but I was trembling like a marriage license in a young man's hand.

Like the minor poet who knows the meanness of his gift, I am doomed to a lifetime of frustration: to be able to comprehend beauty, but not create it.

Once you absorb the maths, it's all perfectly clear.

For a brazen Libertine, an adulterer, a sodomite, an atheist, a fornicator, rakehell, heretic, godless playmaker and debaucher of innocents, you're a sorry state of affairs.

It's comforting when God lets you get away with something once in a while.

And a little unnerving. You start to wonder what he's got set up for you next and why he's softening you up, like.

Women have more of that patience, as a class. That ain't because we're born with it, though. It's because we're schooled to it and taught early that if we don't have it we won't never win.

Marshal Reeves, watching me, snorted. "Live and learn, child," he said. "Everybody's worthy of respect.

We think of forgiveness as a thing. An incident. A choice. But forgiveness is a process. A long, exhausting process. A series of choices that we have to make over, and over, and over again.

Because the anger at having been wronged... doesn't vanish because you say to someone, "I forgive you." Rather forgiveness is an obligation you take on not to act punitively on your anger. To interrogate it when it arises, and accept that you have made the choice to be constructive rather than destructive. Not that you have made the choice never to be angry again.

But anger can also make you sick, if you're exposed to it for too long.... The anger itself can be your reason for living, and feeding it can be your only goal....

Eavesdropping's a sin, but ignorance is fatal. Take your pick.

No one is making me say this. No one is making me tell this story. Nobody's ever been much good at making me say anything I hadn't already made up my mind to say.

There were none so scornful as those who had had to learn the hard way.

And then I had my greatest stroke of genius since that ham sandwich with pickles that time.

You know," he said, "every time a vampire says he doesn't believe in lycanthropes, a werewolf bursts into flames.

All iron comes from stars," Seeker replied, her hand still not quite brushing the hilt of the blade. "It's the last element they can burn before they go nova. Iron's the skeletons of stars, and it's what makes our blood red. I

The way I saw it, nobody thought the worse of a man who followed his pecker anywhere it sniffed, like a droopy-faced hound dog led on by his nose. So why a woman did the same should be judged different… well, women always is.

I don't believe in God. She drops by once in a while and we argue about it. Now can you stop yammering on with your questions long enough for us to steal a few horses?

If you have to die [ ... ] better to go down fighting. Better to die in company. Better not be the last, and alone, weighed down with all that knowing.

Some things are just universal.
Like the known scientific fact that the colder and wetter you are, the better bacon smells frying.

I am the Sovereign of Iss!" the girl declared. "And you are the daughter of Ciwril Xidyla! They had better listen to us.

Bill blinked tears from his eyes, then fastened his gaze on me. "Bitch," he snarled - why they never think of anything cleverer I'll never know.

May I know your name, sir?"
The smile rearranged his face under the terrible scars. "Nezahualcoyotl. Michel Nezahualcoyotl. Charmed.

The kiss tasted of bitter sleep, the sourness of the wine. Something brought by each of them.

I was just the one who upgraded her software and made sure that nothing broke down. If anyone was equipped for the job, it was me, the professional computational linguist.

You ain't gonna like what I have to tell you, but I'm gonna tell you anyway.

What was a book? Not just ink and fiber and stitchery: a series of processes. To a wizard, it was not a static object
but a human thought caught and bound, made concrete through sacred technology. Magic, then, and a deep form of it.

Them as work hardest get no respect for it – women, ranch hands, sharecroppers, factory help, domestics – and them as spend all their time talking about how hard they work have no idea what an honest day's labor for nary enough pay to put beans in your family's bellies is all about.

Girls in my profession know a little too much about men. The ones who want to know a woman as a person are fewer than you'd hope, and most of those don't even realize it about themselves. They don't care who a woman is, or what she's scared of, or who she wants to become. They think they want a woman, but what they really want is a flattering looking glass wearing lipstick and telling them what they want to hear.

The U.S.A. was outraged, and loudly said so to everyone, whether they would listen or not. But there wasn't much America could do about it, having sacrificed our space program on the altars of economic necessity and eternal war.

A barn owl was perched atop the refrigerator.

BLINDSIGHT is fearless: a magnificent, darkly gleaming jewel of a book that hurdles the contradictions inherent in biochemistry, consciousness, and human hearts without breaking stride.

Glanced ostentatiously at my bangle. Blood alcohol content .01%, heart rate leveling off at 72 beats per minute, time 11:42 p.m.

We must create our children alive and fragile and pulsing with the hot blood that is so easy, so terribly easy to spill. It

I liked her scowl and I liked her freedom to wear it.

Whichever group is in ascension at a given moment is, historically speaking, both unlikely to acknowledge the existence of abuses or bias, and also to justify the bias on any grounds they can - social, biological, what have you.

Some would say a whore don't have no expectation of Heaven. I'd say, if she gives value for cash, she's got a better shot at God's blessing than your average banker. Jesus loved Mary Magdalene. He kicked over tables when He met a moneylender.