For as much as I hate the cemetery, I’ve been grateful it’s here, too. I miss my wife. It’s easier to miss her at a cemetery, where she’s never been anything but dead, than to miss her in all the places where she was alive.
Fear is a scavenger who feeds on the future; on what may be and what is possible, extending down the line of our lives.
Fear sits and smiles and is predatory, immobile and silent and serene; an observer who conserves his energy and is content to wait.
Damn real live people, getting in the way of peaceful ideals.
That’s what I’d ask you to do: Hope for peace. Because I know that I would love to be able to lay down my weapon and get to being a colonist. Just like you are. Just like I want to be.
Making peace is often a simple thing, but simple isn’t the same thing as easy.
You can’t afford anthropomorphic biases when some of the aliens most like us would rather make human hamburgers than peace.
If your social consciousness seems stuck in 1975, 2014 is gonna be a rough ride.
Creativity eventually comes from the need not to have ourselves or other people eaten by leopards.
Trust your weapon, it is almost certainly smarter than you are. Remember this and you may yet live.
I do not mind when you tell me what you want and put that first instead of last.
Yes, he’s an equal opportunity asshole,” Szilard said. “And he’s aware of it, which he thinks means it’s okay.
Is it painful?” the groundskeeper asked. “I am asking for science.
To everyone who thinks writing a sequel should be easy because you’ve already clreated the universe: Bwa ha ha ha ha ha ha! Heh. No.
What is it like when you lose someone you love?” Jane asked.”You die, too. And you wait around for your body to catch up.
Part of what makes us human is what we mean to other people, and what people mean to us. I miss meaning something to someone, having that part of being human.
After our negotiations were completed, the dome would be imploded and launched toward the nearest black hole, so that none of its atoms would ever contaminate this particular universe again. I thought that last part was overkill.
I’m going to go pee. If the universe is bigger and stranger than I can imagine, it’s best to meet it with an empty bladder.
The universe isn’t going to be conquered by legions of geriatrics. No offense.
The universe is a big place. Maybe we’re not in the best neighborhood.
Relations were never good (how comfortable can you really be with a race that sees you as a nutritious part of a complete breakfast).
The rest of the rebels were recruited from the ranks of the young and excitable and had rather more enthusiasm than skill.
You would rather face a life without me than to have me choose a life I would not choose for myself.
When you’re a kid all you want to do is be somewhere else.
Colonization is the key to our race’s survival. It’s as simple as that. We must colonize or be closed off and contained by other races.
She was my friend. Briefly, she was my lover. She was braver than I ever would have been in the moment of death. And I bet she was a hell of a shooting star.
Leon had attached himself to me in Chicago like a fat, brat-and-beer-filled tick; I was amazed that someone whose blood was clearly half pork grease had made it to age seventy-five.
The problem with aging is not that it’s one damn thing after another—it’s every damn thing, all at once, all the time.
Well, I miss my wife, you know,” I said. “But I also miss the feeling of, I don’t know, comfort. The sense you’re where you’re supposed to be, with someone you’re supposed to be with.
The story of how I left Huckleberry begins — as do all worthy stories — with a goat
I did two things on my seventy-fifth birthday. I visited my wife’s grave. Then I joined the army.Visiting Kathy’s grave was the less dramatic of the two.
It’s not an effective protest if it’s not pissing people off.
Humor is rare in science fiction… there’s so little of it that it automatically reminds you of other heroes with that acerbic humor when you find it.
When I was 10, I was hit by a car, which turned my right tibia into a jigsaw puzzle.
Do what you need to do and enjoy life as it happens.