Vernor Vinge

“[The Universe] does not care, and even with all our science there are some disasters that we can not avert. All evil and good is petty before nature. Personally, we take comfort from this, that there is a universe to admire that can not be twisted to villainy or good, but which simply is.”

“It is an edged cliché that the world is most pleasant in the years of a Waning Sun. It is true that the weather is not so driven, that everywhere there is a sense of slowing down, and most places experience a few years where the summers do not burn and the winters are not yet overly fierce. It is the classic time of romance. It's a time that seductively beckons higher creatures to relax, postpone. It's the last chance to prepare for the end of the world.”

“Technical people don't make good slaves. Without their wholehearted cooperation, things fall apart.”

“Once upon a time I was such a good liar; I could talk the fish right into my mouths.”

“All evil and good is petty before Nature. Personally, we take comfort from this, that there is a universe to admire that cannot be twisted to villainy or good, but which simply is.”

“One of his greatest talents was empathy; no sadist can aspire to perfection without that diagnostic ability.”

“Sometimes the biggest disasters aren't noticed at all - no one's around to write horror stories.”

“Here we begin frank speculation. And since we are speculating, we'll use those powerful pseudo-laws, the Principles of Mediocrity and Minimal Assumption.”

“The illusion of self-awareness. Happy automatons, running on trivial programs. I'll bet you never guess. From the inside, how can you?”

“Sometimes, sitting here in the dark, slowly slowly creating strategy, she wondered if she was only fooling herself to think her plans were clever.”

“Politics is good; when it works properly, disagreements get solved without people beating each other up. But when a regime knows its days are numbered, there's always the chance it may use its position to change the rules and make the debate it is losing irrelevant.”

“Most civilizations had more fiction than they did real history.”

“Enormous cemeteries existed among sedentary civilizations, where the weight of the past grew larger than any present time.”

“You are enjoying the gift of genius. When ordinary people are confronted with multiple tragedies, the pain scarcely increases. They simple can't feel the extra burdens. But you have a greater capacity for suffering.”

“Sometimes terror and pain are not the best levers; deception, when it works, is the most elegant and the least expensive manipulation of all.”

“We're endangered by our own success.”

“Intelligence is the handmaiden of flexibility and change.”

“Ravna became a librarian. "The ultimate dilettante!" Lynne had teased.”

“Tycoon had a peddler's talent for using words to redefine reality.”

“I never guessed I could cry so hard my face hurt.”

“Though his invention worked superbly [...] his theory was a crock of sewage from beginning to end.”

“They had been at the center of something vast, but as usual with the affairs of the Powers, no one knew quite what had happened, nor the result of the strivings."A Fire Upon the Deep”

“[He] was an insect wandering in the cathedral his mind had become.”

“Programming went back to the beginning of time. It was a little like the midden out back of his father's castle.”

“Little fish risking everything for a piece of godhood...and not knowing heaven from hell, even when they find it.”

“Les enfants sont des créatures extraordinaires, quand ils ne sont pas simplement chiants.”

“He claimed that nearby gun thunder cleared the mind - but most everybody else agreed it made you daft.”

“So much technology, so little talent.”