Spider Robinson Quotes

it's better than a stick in the eye

We are all time travelers moving at the speed of exactly 60 minutes per hour.

Progress is something with no pity, and no purpose. It just happens. It chews up all you ever knew, and spits out things you can't understand, and the only value it seems to have is to make a few people a lot of money.

Sexual intercourse vests no property rights.

I'm going to live forever, or die trying !

Anger is always - always - fear in disguise.

She danced because she needed to. She needed to say things which could be said in no other way, and she needed to take her meaning and her living from the saying of them.

Mankind is divided into two basic sorts: those who find the unknown future threatening ... and those who find it thrilling. The rupture between those two sides has been responsible for most of the bloodshed in history.

The day Apollo 11 landed, I knew men would walk on Mars in my lifetime. I'm no longer nearly so sure. The last budget put forward in Canada contained not a penny for Mars.

A naked blade is reckoned to be less obscene than a naked woman.

It took me better than a quarter century to learn, the hard way, that hard work at something you want to be doing is the most fun that you can have out of bed ... to learn that the smart man finds ways to make everything he does be work; to learn that "leisure" time is truly pleasurable (indeed tolerable) only to the extent that is its subconscious grazing for information with which to infuse newer, better work.

Well, some men learn by listening, some read, some observe and analyze - and some of us just have to pee on the electric fence.

Art takes whatever - and as long as - it takes.

Dreams should be forgotten when we wake. Or one day we will find ourselves unable to sleep.

If a person who indulges in gluttony is a glutton, and a person who commits a felony is a felon, then God is an iron.

And I repeat: if there is anything that can divert the land of my birth from its current stampede into the Stone Age, it is the widespread dissemination of the thoughts and perceptions that Robert Heinlein has been selling as entertainment since 1939.

Euphemisms are for the differently brained.

Librarians are like crack dealers when it comes to hooking small children.

Quite frankly, I don't like you humans. After what you all have done,
I find being 'inhuman' a compliment.

Sometimes I think I must have a Guardian Idiot. A little invisible spirit just behind my shoulder, looking out for me ... only he's an imbecile.

You become uneasy with people in direct proportion to how many lies you have to keep track of in their presence.

I conclude you must be a natural horses's ass.

Just as there are laws of Conservation of Matter and Energy, so there are in fact Laws of Conservation of Pain and Joy. Neither can ever be created or destroyed. But one can be converted into the other.

Time didn't pass; it tailgated.

... when writing, always hook the reader with your first sentence ... in love, never settle ... value yourself first and this will help you to value others ... life is short, so enjoy it to the fullest ... everyone in the world is different, and that's ok ...

I think of us as a people who inoculate ourselves against a plague of insanity with a powerful anti-idiotic called science fiction. I think sf is a literature which by its very nature requires that you be at least a little sane, that you know at least a little something. You must abdicate the right to be ignorant in order to enjoy science fiction, which most people are unwilling to do; and you must learn, if not actually how to think things through, at least what the trick looks like when it's done. Frequent injections will keep a lot of madness away.

You know what gives me the courage to keep on living? The courage to love myself a little? It's having a whole bunch of friends who really give a goddamn. When you share pain, there's less of it, and when you share joy, there's more of it.

If you've lived a bad life, they send you to Hell. But if you've been truly wicked, they give you a tour of
Heaven first ...

anger is always fear in disguise

It's a rare hurt that can stand under the advice, help, and sympathy generated by upwards of thirty people that care. Callahan loses a lot of his regulars. After they've been coming around long enough, they find they don't need to drink any more.

What shocked us the most was that we had no idea why we should be so shocked. Like opening a ginger ale and finding Jamesons' inside: nothing wrong with it, but it sort of takes you by surprise.

And I'm a pair of pants with a hole scorched through the ass?

Never attribute to malice, that which can be reasonably explained by stupidity.

We did make use, from time to time, of candles, neckties, scarves, shoelaces, a little water-color paintbrush, her hairbrush, butter, whipped cream, strawberry jam, Johnson's Baby Oil, my Swedish hand vibrator, a fascinating bead necklace she had, miscellaneous common household items, and every molecule of flesh that was exposed to air or could be located with strenuous search.

The problems of today's youth were no longer a Sunday supplement, or a news broadcast, or anything so remote and intangible. They were suddenly become a dirty, shivering boy, who told us that in this world we had built for him with our sweat and our blood, he was not only tired of living, but so unscared of dying that he did it daily, sometimes for recreation.

Shared joy is increased, shared pain is lessened.

This is what it is to be human: to see the essential existential futility of all action, all striving
and to act, to strive. This is what it is to be human: to reach forever beyond your grasp. This is what it is to be human: to live forever or die trying. This is what it is to be human: to perpetually ask the unanswerable questions, in the hope that the asking of them will somehow hasten the day when they will be answered. This is what it is to be human: to strive in the face of the certainty of failure. This is what it is to be human: to persist.

Me, I have a science fiction writer's conviction that the damn robot is supposed to speak
human, not the other way around.

honesty is hard work.

Annie clouded up. For a second, he thought she was going to erupt, and flinched. She saw that...and got control of herself with an visible effort. She took three deep breaths, each longer than the last, and her features became serene.
All at once it seemed totally clear to Mike that she was right and he was nuts - that his ingenius theory was nonsense, childish, fantasty bullshit. His conviction evaporated, and he was ashamed. He felt his cheeks grow hot, groped for words with which to backtrack -
"I have to admit I have no better explanation for the the facts," Annie said slowly.
Again, Mike did an emotional instant 180. "Holy shit -"
She held up a hand. "I am going to think now. Very hard, for a long time. You will be as quiet as possible while I do." She got up from the computer, went to the bed, and lay down. "Think yourself, or read, or play games with the headphones on, or go Topside if you like." She clasped her hands on her belly, closed her eyes and appeared to go to sleep

The delusion that one's sexual pattern is The Only Right Way To Be is probably the single most common sexual-psychosis syndrome of this era, and it is virtually almost always the victim's fault. You cannot acquire this delusion by observing reality.

Smugness was an art invented by the race of imps, no matter what cats might claim, so he did it very well indeed,

I was a little afraid you might get all macho about not exposing your wife to danger.
I am. I wouldn't want you to accidentally suffer any harm while beating the shit out of me for trying to keep you out of the party. You could forget and hit me on the head, and hurt your knuckles.

And there's this place called college! I mean, they want you to care, dig it, care about this education trip, and they don't care enough themselves to make it as attractive as the crap game across the street!

It's always coldest before the warm.

Librarians are the secret masters of the world. They control information. Don't ever piss one off.

Now that I finally have the time for it, this web surfing stuff turns out to be as interesting and fun and addictive as you've all been telling me. Zipping from link to link, chasing an idea across the noosphere, sucking up information like a killer whale - way cool.

Information can't be put in any container that isn't leaky.

Your diet must be about fifty-fifty, carrots and locoweed," Annie said softly.
He froze.
"I can't figure out what in the name of God's labia majora you think you're doing ... but I'm impressed by how well you're doing it in the dark. You must have eyes like a cat.

Shared pain is lessened.
Shared joy is increased.
Thus we refute entropy.