Joan D. Vinge

“But what force in the galaxy is stronger than she is?""Indifference." Jerusha surprised herself with the answer. "Indifference, Gundhalinu, is the strongest force in the universe. It makes everything it touches meaningless. Love and hate don't stand a chance against it. It lets neglect and decay and monstrous injustice go unchecked. It doesn't act, it allows. And that's what gives it so much power.”

“To be alive was to be disappointed. You tried and failed and kept on trying, never knowing whether you'd ever get what you wanted. But sometimes we get what we need.”

“Indifference is the strongest force in the universe. It makes everything it touches meaningless. Love and hate don't stand a chance against it.”

“Don't worry. You're safe now. You've got nothing left to steal.”

“All medical men are voyeurs. Why else would they become doctors? Except for the sadists, of course, who simply enjoy the blood and the pain.”

“Everything changes, today's tears are tomorrow's absurdities, after all.”

“He is afraid, as suddenly he knows that he was afraid all along, that if he felt her body so close to him he would never let her go.”

“There are two tragedies in life. One is never getting your heart's desire. The other is getting it.”

“Life scars us with its random motion, he thought. Only death is perfect.”

“I love you,' he whispered again, wonderingly, as he understood at last how a lifetime together with someone that you loved could seem like an eternity, and yet not be long enough.”

“My gods or your gods, who know which are stronger?' That's why we honor them all - just in case. There are more cultures even than Gods in the Eight Worlds, and among them you'll find people who are willing to kill you, or each other, over any difference in belief or lifestyle or physical appearance you can imagine - and some you can't. They all think they're right. There's no Truth, Tammis, only differences of opinion.”

“It doesn't matter. I'm not asking forever of you...just let me love you now.”

“I am only a cup that knowledge holds. It does not to knowledge matter how poor the cup is. It is the wisdom of those who drink of me that me wise makes. Fools make a sibyl foolish, wherever she is.”

“Real power is control. Knowing that you can do anything...and not doing it only because you can.”

“In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is stoned to death.”