Greg Bear Quotes

Occupation of vast reaches of space means nothing. It is control of population centers and essential resources that determines victory or defeat.

All things will be ambiguous, for this is the curse of wisdom.

The asteroids interfere with the collapsing function of each emerging ship; in effect, either forcing them to abandon the transit, or to combine asteroid mass with the ship's.

Why do we capital-N Nerds love Mars so much? Because it's beautiful, it's tough, it's buried in our mythic, childhood memories. It's covered with human triumphs but also with sad stories of failure.

Didn't anyone who changed things ultimately lead some people - perhaps many people - to death, grief, torment?

Altruism is masked self-interest. Aggressive self-interest is a masked urge to self-destruction.

She didn't want to change just to be better. Though there was always better to aspire for. It was very confused.

Once, poets were magicians. Poets were strong, stronger than warriors or kings - stronger than old hapless gods. And they will be strong once again.

There is nothing finer in the world than the telling of tales. Split atoms if you wish, but splitting an infinitive-and getting away with it-is far nobler. Lance boils if you wish, but pricking pretensions is often cleaner and always more fun.

All that I was, but for reflections in a cracked mirror, has been lost for a long, long time.

They understood the universe in ways we never will. We can't unlock their secrets - but now, apparently, we can destroy all they ever made. That's what I call progress.

This is solute, which will cause every animal killed by Halo action to instantly decay into component molecules. This will avert an ecological miasma. But it could also be construed as a way to hide a tremendous crime from later investigators.

My finest opponent, the Mantle accepts all who live fiercely, who defend their young, who build and struggle and grow, and even those who dominate - as humans have dominated, cruelly and without wisdom.

In the end, there is cruelty and death alone over the land. Not in a single ray of light or grain of sand will you find solace, for all is dark, and the cold gaze of God's indifferent, heavy-lidded eyes falls on all with equal disdain. Only in your inner strength is there salvation; you must live just as a tree must live, or the cockroaches and fleas that flourish in the land and ruin of Earth. And so you live, and feel the sting of knowing you live. You eat whatever comes to hand, and if what you eat was once a brother or sister, so be it; God does not care. Nobody cares. You whore, and if you whore with man or woman, nobody cares; for when all are hungry, all are whores, even those who use the whores. And disease flourishes when all are whores, for germs must live, and spread across the land and ruin of Earth.

Sometimes the problem outshines the pain.

Humans believe in nothingness, in zeros. It is one of their distinguishing traits. They keep inventing nothing. Forerunners know otherwise.

I'm still out there. In my head. I have to sort it out or I'll never come home.

If the Domain is destroyed, I have condemned my husband to an eternity of darkness, silence, with only his own rage and madness to keep him company.

They're trying to understand what space is. That's tough for them. They break distances down into concentrations of chemicals. For them, space is a range of taste intensities.

Explain it to me. God says he loves me but dumps me into a world of pain. You, so full of hate, so ignorant, he leaves alone. Self-righteous bigots he doesn't even touch. Explain that to me!

We were not then powerful enough to erase all evidence of the Precursors, to destroy their star roads and citadels and other artifacts. And so we left at least one Precursor behind, to live out dreams of vengeance and hatred, to lay down plans in cold and darkness at the heart of a lost asteroid - over millions of years.

I now understand why humans smile. Forerunners have done all they can to banish smiles. Not all smiles are about greetings and joy. Some smile in shared pain.

She has these strange gray eyes that let me see all the way back to when her scorn shaped men's lives.

Sometimes I feel like a beetle crawling through a fusion power plant. I can feel a certain amount, see a certain amount, but I sure as hell don't understand everything.

This is the one who betrays Forerunners, their own greatest monster. We know this one. Remember?

It's kind of a misnomer about science fiction that science fiction is about anything other than people. It's about people doing stuff, sometimes doing extraordinary stuff.

To see the awful things is to see life as it really is. It makes you sharper, stronger, superior. You can stand it when others cannot.

Nothing is lost. Nothing is forgotten.It was in the blood, the flesh,And now it is forever.

If we who are honored with life do not perceive the obvious, then we are forced to live it again, around another corner, from another angle.

Apocalypse could not be repealed by the democratic process.

To fight an enemy properly, you have to know what they are. Ignorance is defeat.

Can the Flood choose to infect, or not to infect?

The fox speaks with the hurricane and says, "I need to travel far and fast. Can you take me?" The hurricane regards the puny fox with its huge, calm eye and asks, "What can you do for me?" "Why, I will let you whisper your dreams to me." "But I must kill whatever I carry. You are a living thing and do not wish to die." "If you do not kill me, I will listen to your inmost self, and tell all the animals, that they may feel sympathy for you." "What do I care for sympathy? I am all-powerful." "Yes, but someday, your winds will die, and my kits will tell this tale even when you are gone, of the time great-great-great-grandfather fox was carried by the winds and lived and learned their secrets." "But then they will not be afraid of me, and what good am I if I do not inspire fear?" "Oh, no living thing could ever be so strong they would not fear you. I give you something more. I give you a voice throughout time that is more than a wordless bellow of rage.

The horizon curved upward to both sides. Not good, not right. Horizons do not curve up.

So this additional indignity will be inflicted upon you. It means, I believe, that humans will not end here, but may rise again - fight again. Humans are always warriors.

Life on earth is hard. Competition for the necessities of life is fierce. How ridiculous to believe that the law of harsh survival would not be true elsewhere, or that it would be negated by the progress of technology in an advanced civilization ...

I begin to rant. I'm special, I have needs, I have a job to do - once I get my act together. I'm going to be important.

We fought and argued and loved and learned through the long, cold voyage. We chose teams, disbanded, re-formed, chose again, and now the fit is perfection within diversity.

Mother Nature is a bitch.

You are what you leave behind.

But to fight something, you really have to try to understand its motivations - particularly when the something you're fighting holds most of the cards, the deck is stacked against you, and the whole gambling hall is on fire and filled with thugs.

When all hopes are lost, only then does reality acquire that sharp focus that defines who we are and what we have become.

But ingenuity is often indistinguishable from foolish play, and foolish play is one of those traits I find most endearing about humanity.

Working in Isaac's universe was more of a treat than a challenge.

The asteroid was longer on the inside than it was on the outside. The seventh chamber went on forever.

Marty knew about rituals. "That means we're supposed to do something a certain way so we won't feel guilty," he said. "You got it," Harry said. Marty

You seem to like helping, taking care of people," he said. "That is admirable."
"You enjoy being nurtured?"
"Well, that isn't all you promise. When you touch me, I feel a fire at my center. You want me to grow and find my true story, my purpose. You seem to want to be there when I see new things. You want to share and enjoy my discoveries.

Ray Bradbury is, for many reasons, the most influential writer in my life. Throughout our long friendship, Ray supplied not only his terrific stories but a grand model of what a writer could be, should be, and yet rarely is: brilliant and charming and accessible, willing to tolerate and to teach, happy to inspire but also to be inspired.

Throughout my life, I sought power and profit for myself, for my rate. Now, at long last, I think I understand the meaning of a crime against the Mantle. After this, no need to seek balance. I will await my penance here.

They start again as children - all together. It is what the Composer was designed to prevent.

Man is the poet who kills, Woman the angel who eats.

Welcome to the truth of our world-a massive seed shot out to the stars, filled with deadly children. A seed designed to slay everything it touches.

Conservatism is not about tradition and morality, hasn't been for many decades ... It is about the putative biological and spiritual superiority of the wealthy.

Desert and Death Valley were the Mecca and Al Medina

We've been sitting in our tree chirping like foolish birds for over a century now, wondering why no other birds answered. The galactic skies are full of hawks, that's why. Planetisms that don't know enough to keep quiet, get eaten.

I sometimes think we deserve to die, we're all so goddamned stupid.

Science fiction works best when it stimulates debate.

We may exist in all universes, but 'hear' only one because of our limitations, the valve of our desires, our practical, physical needs. All is vibration, with nothing vibrating across no distance whatsoever. All is music. A universe, a world, is just one long difficult song. The difference between worlds is the difference between songs.

No immunity and no cure. There is only struggle, or succumb. Either way, the Primordial will have its due. We have met our creators, they have given us the answers we sought - and that is our curse.

We're told another large-scale terrorist attack is inevitable by those people who have committed so many resources to preventing it. They likely know what they're talking about.

Chemists did it in their tubes and doctors did it with patience, but only a techie would do it in geometric progression.

No more will. No more freedom. Nothing new but agonizing death and never good shall come of it. We are the last of those who gave you breath and form, millions of years ago. We are the last of those your kind defied and ruthlessly destroyed. We are the last Precursors. And now we are legion.

The death of a world is judgment of its inadequacy. Death removes the unnecessary and the false.

Thought moves like a dissociation of leaves across a lawn in a breeze.

We survived the Shaping Sickness. Forerunners hoped to learn the secret of how we survived the Shaping Sickness, but we would not give it to them, even under torture!

Odd how food and water and a clean body - and a few moments of rest - lead me into philosophy.

Of course! We laid waste their fleets, attacked their outpost worlds. ... And the Forerunners themselves found a way to bring down the indestructible architecture of the Precursors, on Charum Hakkor. ... Charum Hakkor, once called the Eternal.

What I could not understand was why the Didact had decided to save one of those very weapons whose creation he had so decisively opposed.

It was when a society became most distressed and antiquated that it would recreate an overwhelming fantasy of some Golden Age, a time when all was great and glorious, when people were more noble and causes more magnificent and honorable.

It's been a great place to get in touch with what people are really thinking. And to make contact with readers and other writers. Egalitarian, wide open, like the Wild West!

Stars I understand. They shed light and give life. It is the emptiness between that haunts me.

Work, fight, live. All the sweeter. Mind after mind will shape and absorb. In the end, all will be quiet with wisdom.