Stephen Baxter Quotes

If I was a cynic I would be wondering if sooner or later some charismatic douche-bag might stomp all over this Little House on the Prairie dream of yours. ~ Stephen Baxter

In the Vortex that lies beyond time and space tumbled a police box that was not a police box. ~ Stephen Baxter

The ColU, sitting on its tabletop, seemed to Stef to twinkle. 'I'm Colius the Oracle now. ~ Stephen Baxter

If I don't speak the name of this thing, it still feels like it isn't real. Does that make any sense?'
The ColU spoke to them now, whispering in their earphones. 'It makes plenty of sense, Mardina Eden Jones Guthfrithson. The power of names: probably one of the oldest human superstitions, going back to the birth of language itself. To deny a name is to deny a thing reality. And yet now it is time to name names. ~ Stephen Baxter

The squid are leaving, Maura… ~ Stephen Baxter

[F]olks would better off dipping their heads in a bucket of liquid [nitrogen] and battering them against a tree very very hard than reading Baxter's Titan. It would not surprise me if reading that book causes birth defects. ~ Stephen Baxter

We ought to call ourselves Homo clamorans. Noisemaking man. ~ Stephen Baxter

In the afterglow of the Big Bang, humans spread in waves across the universe, sprawling and brawling and breeding and dying and evolving. There were wars, there was love, there was life and death. Minds flowed together in great rivers of consciousness, or shattered in sparkling droplets. There was immortality to be had, of a sort, a continuity of identity through replication and confluence across billions upon billions of years.
Everywhere they found life.
Nowhere did they find mind - save what they brought with them or created - no other against which human advancement could be tested.
With time, the stars died like candles. But humans fed on bloated gravitational fat, and achieved a power undreamed of in earlier ages.
They learned of other universes from which theirs had evolved. Those earlier, simpler realities too were empty of mind, a branching tree of emptiness reaching deep into the hyperpast.
It is impossible to understand what minds of that age - the peak of humankind, a species hundreds of billions of times older than humankind - were like. They did not seek to acquire, not to breed, not even to learn. They had nothing in common with us, their ancestors of the afterglow.
Nothing but the will to survive. And even that was to be denied them by time.
The universe aged: indifferent, harsh, hostile, and ultimately lethal.
There was despair and loneliness.
There was an age of war, an obliteration of trillion-year memories, a bo ~ Stephen Baxter

Rome strikes back! ~ Stephen Baxter

An ability to believe in things that weren't true was a powerful tool. ~ Stephen Baxter

Evaded her, and she sensed they did not believe her ~ Stephen Baxter

... It was dark. There were no dead stars, no rogue planets. Matter itself had long evaporated, burned up by proton decay, leaving nothing but a thin smoke of neutrinos drifting out at lightspeed. But even now there was something rather than nothing. The creatures of this age drifted like clouds, immense, slow, coded in immense wispy atoms. Free energy was dwindling to zero, time stretching to infinity. It took these cloud-beings longer to complete a single thought than it once took species to rise and fall on Earth ... ~ Stephen Baxter

And our sailors of space have a legend of the furthest star of all, where the gods lay their plans against us, or plot the catastrophes of the end of time: the pachacuti. We call this undiscovered star Karu, which means 'far'.'
'As we speak of Ultima,' Quintus mused. ~ Stephen Baxter

Our citizens must be protected, even from being dumb, which is not a crime. ~ Stephen Baxter

I quoted to him what I remembered of Charles Darwin: "'Judging by the past, we may safely infer that not one living species will transmit its unaltered likeness to a distant futurity ... '"
"Darwin was right," Nebogipfel said gently. ~ Stephen Baxter

Two damaged people, thrown together in a hostile world, doing their best. What else was there to life, in the end? ~ Stephen Baxter

Earth stuff, Mars boy. ~ Stephen Baxter

Those redshift numbers. The cephalopods must be leaving at close to light speed."
"Where do you think they are going?"
"Maybe that isn't the point, Maura. Maybe the point is what they are trying to flee. ~ Stephen Baxter

We seem to be young, in a very old Galaxy. We're like kids tiptoeing through a ruined mansion. ~ Stephen Baxter

By now there were whole new Industrial Revolutions going on in the Low Earths; the British seemed to have the building of steam engines and railways in their genes. ~ Stephen Baxter

Authority. The antithesis of science. ~ Stephen Baxter

A sentient mind refuses to be confined by the parameters of its programming. ~ Stephen Baxter

This is a strange situation, sir. Perhaps imagination is what we need. ~ Stephen Baxter

And it wasn't just the subjugation of human beings that distressed her but the level of daily, almost casual brutality. Even for routine punishments there were blood-stained stakes, lead-tipped whips. She's always rather admired the Romans, for their literacy, their order, their engineering, their respect for the law. Now, she was finding, she'd never fully imagined this side of their civilisation. ~ Stephen Baxter

The folk of Hell-Knows-Where by default still thought of themselves as Americans. ~ Stephen Baxter

We're going to bollocks up our second chance at Eden, even before the paint has dried. ~ Stephen Baxter

And maybe a hundred billion cephalopod minds, out in the Trojans, just light-minutes apart, have become something - "
"Transcendent. ~ Stephen Baxter

The "gravity train" was devised in the seventeenth century by British scientist Robert Hooke, who presented the idea in a letter to Isaac Newton. The idea has been seriously presented a few times, such as to the Paris Academy of Sciences in the nineteenth century. ~ Stephen Baxter

The Earth gave you life, gave you food and language and intelligence, and will take you back when you die. ~ Stephen Baxter

I despise the religions we have, nothing but flummery and manipulation based on texts and materials so reworked over time they're all meaningless. I despise the division religions religions bring; humans have enough problems without that. I despise con men like Father Melly. And yet, and yet … ~ Stephen Baxter

Imagine God inside your computer, your phone, everyone else's computer. Imagine someone who almost is the Black Corporation, with all its power and riches and reach. And who, despite all this, seems pretty sane and beneficent by the standards of most gods. Oh, and who sometimes swears in Tibetan ... ~ Stephen Baxter

There'll be a sky full of babies and their shit, suspended overhead. You do not want to get caught in that rain when it falls. ~ Stephen Baxter

If something is so far beyond your imagination, it's hard even to fear it. ~ Stephen Baxter

Wow. Pioneers with ice-cream."
Joshua felt motivated to defend his home. "Well, it doesn't have to be like the Donner Party, Sally- ~ Stephen Baxter

We could try the Turin test," said Lobsang.
"Oh, machines have been able to pass the Turing test for years."
"No, the Turin test. We both pray for an hour, and see if God can tell the difference. ~ Stephen Baxter

This is what I have learned, Malenfant. This is how it is, how it was, how it came to be. ~ Stephen Baxter

Well, don't stand about like that, man; if you're no use you're certainly no ornament. Bring that in and tell me what it says. ~ Stephen Baxter

A brief life burns brightly. ~ Stephen Baxter

Before starting work on this book, we had to ask ourselves a question what is science fiction? Seemingly simple, but in reality the answer was hard to formulate. This is the definition we settled upon:
Science fiction is a member of a group of fictional genres whose narrative drive depends upon events, technologies, societies, etc. that are impossible, unreal, or that are depicted as occurring at some time in the future, the past or in a world of secondary creation. These attributes vary widely in terms of actuality, likelihood, possibility and in the intent with which they are employed by the creator. The fundamental difference between science fiction and the other "fantastical genres" of fantasy and horror is this: the basis for the fiction is one of rationality. The sciences this rationality generates can be speculative, largely erroneous, or even impossible, but explanations are, nevertheless, generated through a materialistic worldview. The supernatural is not invoked. ~ Stephen Baxter

The Long Earth is bountiful but not forgiving. ~ Stephen Baxter

We do teach our kids the golden rule - Do as you would be done by. ~ Stephen Baxter

Here, the Prophet was born in a settled and stable province of a strong Roman Empire. Much as in our timeline, Islamic civilisation, the dar-al Islam, flourished, but under Roman protection. There were no centuries of inter-faith conflict in Europe – no crusades, for instance. Even in the pre-Christian days, the Romans were always pragmatic about local religions. To the Romans, Islam is a muscular sister creed of the Christianity that is their official state religion. ~ Stephen Baxter

A citizen of the Roman Empire, for example, would have placed less value on individual liberty in the modern Western sense than on collective responsibility. ~ Stephen Baxter

Rees, the secret of a Scientist is not what he knows. It's what he asks. ~ Stephen Baxter

I have a vision of a Galaxy overrun by mankind from Core to rim. Of four hundred billion stars each enslaved to the rhythm of Earth's day, Earth's year. I have a vision of a trillion planets pulsing to the beat of a human heart. ~ Stephen Baxter

It's never going to stop,' Malenfant whispered. 'It will consume the Solar System, the stars - '
This isn't some local phenomenon, Malenfant. This is a fundamental change in the structure of the universe. It will never stop. It will sweep on, growing at light speed, a runaway feedback fueled by the collapse of the vacuum itself. The Galaxy will be gone in a hundred thousand years, Andromeda, the nearest large galaxy, in a couple of million years. It will take time, but eventually -
'The future has gone,' Malenfant said. 'My God. That's what this means, isn't it? The downstream can't happen now. All of it is gone. The colonization of the Galaxy; the settlement of the universe; the long, patient fight against entropy...' That immense future had been cut off to die, like a tree chopped through at the root. 'Why, Michael? Why have the children done this? Burned the house down, destroyed the future - '
Because it was the wrong future. Michael looked around the sky. He pointed to the lumpy, spreading edge of the unreality bubble.
There. Can you see that? It's already starting...
'What is?'
The budding... The growth of the true vacuum region is not even. There will be pockets of the false vacuum - remnants of our universe - isolated by the spreading true vacuum. The fragments of false vacuum will collapse. Like -
'Like black holes.' And in that instant, Malenfant understood. 'That's what this is for. This is just a better way of making black ~ Stephen Baxter

You'll feel like Jesu Himself in the End Times, when He will descend on Rome with Augustus and Vespasian on His left and right hands, to establish the final dominion of the Caesars across the stars. ~ Stephen Baxter

He took refuge in the concept that sometimes slowest is the fastest in the end. ~ Stephen Baxter

Is it really conceivable, given all of that immensity, all that structure, that we are truly alone? That life emerged here, and nowhere else? ~ Stephen Baxter

The past is a distraction, a source of envy, enmity, bitterness. Only the present matters, for only in the present can we shape the future.
Cut loose the past; it is dead weight.
Let the Extirpation continue. Let it never end. ~ Stephen Baxter

Every door I pass is one way. So I may as well look around, and see what there is beyond the next door, and the next. ~ Stephen Baxter

Every world needed an artist. ~ Stephen Baxter

They actually have working gasoline cars, and motels and roadside diners. They even have halls where they pump in toxic fumes so you can smell how it was when we were kids. ~ Stephen Baxter

You can't just say there is a god because the world is beautiful. You have to account for bone cancer in children. ~ Stephen Fry

The world has changed far more in the past 100 years than in any other century in history. The reason is not political or economic but technological-technologies that flowed directly from advances in basic science. Clearly, no scientist better represents those advances than Albert Einstein: TIME's Person of the Century. ~ Stephen Hawking

It is a cliché that most clichés are true, but then like most clichés, that cliché is untrue ~ Stephen Fry

The summer movies are coming out. My advice: just stay home and burn a good book. ~ Stephen Colbert

Altruism is for those who can't endure their desires. There's a world as ambiguous as a moan, a pleasure moan our earnest neighbors might think a crime. It's where we could live. I'll say I love you, Which will lead, of course, to disappointment, but those words unsaid poison every next moment. I will try to disappoint you better than anyone else has.
Mon Semblable ~ Stephen Dunn

We who revel in nature's diversity and feel instructed by every animal tend to brand Homo sapiens as the greatest catastrophe since the Cretaceous extinction. ~ Stephen Jay Gould

I've never really been the type of person who worries much about what people think of me. ~ Stephen Baldwin

When we speak with others about our experience in Christ, it sharpens our attentiveness to the voice and will of the Father. Sharing our stories helps us clarify the intentions of our hearts toward the fulfillment of his divine will. A small circle of friends also reminds us of the presence, power and protection of the Holy Spirit. Confiding in one another instills a sense of hope for the future as children who are dearly loved by their Father. ~ Stephen A. Macchia

I did the Broadway album unfortunately in a year when there were no hits. ~ Les Baxter

He could not close his eyes and just walk by; that was a real monster his traitor mind had created, and it could really tear him apart. ~ Stephen King

We think of the noble object for which the professor appears tonight, we may be assured that the Lord will forgive any one who will laugh at the professor. ~ Stephen Leacock

There is no greater privilege for anyone than being able to personally talk with and speak into the ears of Almighty God. ~ Stephen Kendrick

you liked him so much you just hated to let him down." He was, and is, all but worshiped by the men of E Company. ~ Stephen E. Ambrose

Childhood itself is a myth for almost all of us. We think we remember what happens to us when we were kids, but we don't. ~ Stephen King

What about reality, you ask? Well, as far as I'm concerned, reality can go take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut. ~ Stephen King

I've been a fan of vampire fiction since way, way back - I loved Stephen King, Anne Rice, Peter Straub, Robert McCammon, Shirley Jackson, lots of great horror and paranormal fiction. ~ Rachel Caine

What I'd show you is much more bizarre than anything we have looked at so far, and I warn you in advance that the first impulse will be to laugh. That's all right. Laugh if you must. Just don't take your eye off what you see, for even in your imagination, here is a creature who can do you damage. ~ Stephen King

Forget about letting nature taking its course to make you wealthy, Cosmic Ordering works faster. ~ Stephen Richards

It is in doing things and not reading about them that results come about. ~ Stephen Richards

So I just live with my insomnia. I do crossword puzzles, or wander out to the music room and fool around on the piano, or read. Those late hours when the world is completely still, when the only sound is the rustle of the air in the vents and the wind visiting the trees outside, when the darkness is tucked tight around the house and you feel as life itself the movements of your own consciousness-these are wonderful hours to read. There is no interruption. ~ Stephen Goodwin

He thought one of the universal truths of life was that, sooner or later, someone always paid. ~ Stephen King

Now stop fucking around and look at the fishies. You know you want to. ~ Stephen King

Mankind's greatest achievements have come about by talking and its greatest failures by not talking. It doesn't have to be like this. ~ Stephen Hawking

Yet if there really were a complete unified theory, it would also presumably determine our actions - so the theory itself would determine the outcome of our search for it! And why should it determine that we come to the right conclusions from the evidence? Might it not equally well determine that we draw the wrong conclusion? Or no conclusion at all? ~ Stephen Hawking

God takes men's hearty desires and will, instead of the deed, where they have not power to fulfill it; but he never took the bare deed instead of the will. ~ Richard Baxter

Books were escape. Books were freedom. ~ Stephen King

It is reasonable to ask who or what created the universe, but if the answer is God, then the question has merely been deflected to that of who created God. ~ Stephen Hawking

My Hamlet was about as alienated as you can get. Mine was a bitter and lonely prince. Valid, I think, but maybe tough to root for. I think that romance was missing. ~ Stephen Lang

WIFE AND DOG MISSING. REWARD FOR DOG. ~ Stephen King

Science is not 'organized common sense'; at its most exciting, it reformulates our view of the world by imposing powerful theories against the ancient, anthropocentric prejudices that we call intuition. ~ Stephen Jay Gould

There's nothing mysterious about Cosmic Ordering, it's simply a method used to transmute thought into reality. ~ Stephen Richards

Don't let time make a fool of you, use Cosmic Ordering. ~ Stephen Richards

One of the few things my father says when he's had a few that I agree with is that kids don't have much balls in this generation. Some of them are trying to start the revolution by bombing U.S. government washrooms, but none of them are throwing Molotov cocktails at the Pentagon. ~ Stephen King

We do not credit to the ideal of religious freedom when we talk as though religious belief is something of which public-spirited adults should be ashamed. ~ Stephen L. Carter

Both of his parents were firm believers in better living through chemistry. ~ Stephen King

He felt as he always did when he finished a book - queerly empty, let down, aware that for each little success he had paid a toll of absurdity. ~ Stephen King

I always thought of myself as being the unluckiest girl I knew. I was, I believed, a 'jinx' and I was 'jinxed', or so I thought! ~ Stephen Richards

Once you understand what jobs people are striving to do, it becomes easier to predict what products or services they will take up and which will fall flat. While ~ Stephen Wunker

I'm not as famous as Stephen Hawking, but certainly in the U.S., I have a very high profile for a scientist. It is an awesome responsibility, one that I don't shoulder lightly. ~ Neil DeGrasse Tyson

Them up when the other team had a runner on third. By the time the Yankees came to town - this was going on to the end of April - the whole stadium would flush orange when the Bombers had a runner on third, which they did often in that series. Because the Yankees kicked the living shit out of us and took over first place. It was no fault of the kid's; he hit in every game and tagged out Bill Skowron between home and third when the lug got caught in a rundown. ~ Stephen King

Blogging, writing conventional articles, and being science consultant and pocket protector ninja to various web portals and TV programs, quite often trying to promote the penicillin of hard data to people who had no interest in being cured of their ignorance. ~ Stephen L. Burns

Grant us brotherhood, not only for this day but for all our years - a brotherhood not of words but of acts and deeds. ~ Stephen Vincent Benet

But all it is, is needing someone warm, needing to be warm. Needing to love. Is that so bad? ~ Stephen King

The aikido term ma ai, which means "space harmony" ("ai" is Chinese for "love," and it translates into Japanese as harmonious connection) refers to the optimal distance point, where you're close enough to connect well and far enough to enjoy your own space. ~ Stephen Gilligan

Failing to forgive yourself for certain wrongs you committed in the past can create self-dislike. ~ Stephen Richards

There could be whole antiworlds and antipeople made out of antiparticles. However, if you meet your antiself, don't shake hands! You would both vanish in a great flash of light. ~ Stephen Hawking

I'm scared of madmen with knives, and perverts hiding in alleys. I'm scared of
people, because they're shit. But etheric entities don't frighten me. They don't have
hands of flesh and blood. They can't fire a gun. The only way they can hurt you is
through fear, your own mind. You must know that. ~ Stephen Jones