Famous quotes
Quotes by famous people, credited to who said them. Your own quotes must not match any of these. More are added all the time. 1,158,269 quotes Who coined it · How we decide
EnglishItalianoPolskiעבריתFrançaisPortuguêsفارسیEspañol中文РусскийDeutschالعربيةहिन्दी日本語ΕλληνικάLatina
Michael Swanwick
115 quotes
“It was classic cult behavior: the charismatic leader whose word was law, the unreasoning obedience, the pervasive fear.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In some ways she was not a very good scientist: impatient with data, too ready to leap to conclusions, apt to judge an idea not by its merits but by its sheer niftiness.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Second chances were so rare in this world to be almost miracles.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Still...the greatest adventure of her life was over and done for. She had returned from Never-Never Land, from Middle-earth, from El Dorado. The dragons were slain, the treasures dug up and hauled away in wagons, the swords and bright banners packed in trunks and stowed in the attic. Nothing she ever did would be as vivid and meaningful again.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“She had gone rafting down the Eden. She had faced down the largest animals ever to walk the Earth. She had tended to a dying woman in her final days and nursed an ailing man back to health. She had known tears and laughter, toil, love, sweat, and danger. These were the primal satisfactions, the things that made life matter. What did Washington, D.C., in the twenty-first century have to offer that could compare with them?”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It was none of your foul science. I am an occultist.” “A distinction in terminology only. Our means may differ, but we employ identical techniques. First, render the brain open to suggestion. We use magnetic resonance, while you employ drugs, ritual, sex, terror, or some combination thereof. Then, when the brain is susceptible, imprint it with new behavior patterns. We use holotherapeutic viruses as the message carriers; you eat a rat. Finally, reinforce the new pattern in your daily life. Our methods are probably identical there. The skill is extremely old; people were being reprogrammed long before machines.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Excuse me,” she said hesitantly, “but what effect do these minor planets have on our behavior and fortunes? I mean, you know, astrological influence?” He looked at her. “None.” “None at all.” “No.” “But if the planets affect our fortunes—” She stumbled to a stop at the dispassionately scornful look on the pale man’s face, the slow way he shook his head. “Surely you’ll agree that the planets order and control our destinies?” “They do not.” “Not at all?” “Then what does? Control our destinies, I mean.” “The only external forces that have any influence on us are those we can see every day: the smile, the frown, the fist, the brick wall. What you call ‘destiny’ is merely a semantic fallacy, the attribution of purpose to blind causality. Insofar as any of us are compelled to resist the flow of random events, we are driven solely by internal drives and forces.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Well, birth control’s easy. The first thing you have to know is that it doesn’t work.” “What?” “Not consistently. No matter how careful you are, every time you play hide-the-salami with the boys, you’re running the risk of ending up with a belly full of consequences.” “But—” “Contraceptive spells are never entirely reliable. That’s because their power comes from the Mother, and the Mother wants children. Each cantrip has its loophole, every fetish its flaw. Ultimately, contraception is just a way of luring you into playing her game.” “You mean that sooner or later it’s going to fail me?” “That’s not what I said. It works well enough for enough of us that the rest will take their chances. But the odds are never going to be as good as you’d like them to be. There are no guarantees.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You are still infested with hope. You think there is a life worth living somewhere, and that some combination of action, restraint, knowledge, and luck will save you, if only you can get the mix right. Well, I’ve got news for you. Right here, right now—this is as good as it gets.” “Things will get better!” “Have they ever?” The dragon’s contempt was palpable. The cabin hatch hissed open. “Go. Return to your dormitory room and enjoy your present. Come back when you’ve grown large enough to look upon futility without flinching. Come back when you’ve despaired and moved beyond despair to vengefulness. Come back when you’ve decided to stop lying to yourself.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Can you really kill the Goddess?” Jane asked. “You stupid gobbet of flesh! Don’t you understand yet? There is no Goddess.” “No,” Jane cried. “You said yourself—” “I lied,” the dragon said with a fearful complacency. “Everyone you have ever met has lied to you. Life exists, and all who live are born to suffer. The best moments are fleeting and bought with the coin of exquisite torment. All attachments end. All loved ones die. All that you value passes away. In such a vexatious existence laughter is madness and joy is folly. Shall we accept that it all happens for no reason, with no cause? That there is nobody to blame but ourselves but that accepting the responsibility is pointless for doing so cannot ease, defer, or deaden the pain? Not likely! It is so much more comforting to erect a straw figure on which to blame it all. “Some bow down before the Goddess and others curse her every name. There is not a fart’s difference between the two approaches. They cling to the fiction of the Goddess because admitting the alternative is unbearable.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You ask a question that cannot be answered without knowing the nature of the primal chaos from which being arose. Is Spiral Castle like a crystal, once shattered, forever destroyed? That is what I prefer to believe. Or is it like a still pond, whose mirrored surface may be shattered and churned, but which will inevitably restore itself as the waves die down? You may believe this if you choose. You can even believe—why not?—that the restored universe will be an improvement on the old. For me, so long as I have my vengeance I care not what comes after.” “And us?” “We die.” An involuntary rise in the dragon’s voice, a slight quickening of cadence, told her that she had touched upon some unclean hunger akin to but less seemly than battle-lust. “We die beyond any chance of rebirth. You and I and all we have known will cease to be. The worlds that gave us birth, the creatures that shaped us—all will be unmade. So comprehensive will be their destruction that even their pasts will die with them. It is an extinction beyond death that we court. Though the ages stretch empty and desolate into infinity and beyond, there will be none to remember us, nor any to mourn. Our joys, sorrows, struggles, will never have been. “And even if there is a universe to come, it will know naught of us.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“How...how can”—savagely, he slashed an arm down before him in absolute negation of all he saw—“such be? How could God allow it?” “God? You fool—there is no God!” The words struck Faust like a great bronze clapper, shattering the crusted certainties of a lifetime, reverberating, setting up echoes that washed back and forth through his being in slowly lessening waves, leaving no atom unshaken, no belief untouched. There was no God. He knew this for the truth, recognized it as such on an almost physical level, for it summed up everything he had ever thought or reasoned. It resolved a thousand doubts. It left no question unanswered. There was no God! Everything was possible now. Nothing was forbidden.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Tell me! What do you think of life? What do you think of ambition? What do you think of science, of learning, of love, of fame, of glory, of aspiration?” “I think...that those are all very different things.” “You are wrong. They are all one thing—a cunt.” “Sir?” “A cunt! Consider: The cunt is a nasty, ugly, filthy thing. Yet we desire it so greatly as to be willing to suffer any indignity to attain it. For the sake of it we labor and preen and whisper sugary words. We go to the theatre with flowers in our arms, climb over back walls by moonlight, write sonnets, jump out of windows with our trousers in our hands, give dangerous men their choice of weapons. We build love-nests for it sake, and cities, and civilizations. It is our all, our only, our ideal. It has created us and made us great. Such is life, such is ambition, such is science, learning, love, fame, glory, and aspiration. The Eternal Cunt,” he said significantly, “draws us onward.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Fool. There is no why. The very word is a semantic fallacy. Ask me how and I can lay out for you cause and effect, one thing leading to another, the alcohol acting on a grieving man’s mind, the door inadequately guarded, the people within isolated from the common lot of humanity by the dreadful secret of their ancestry.” He rattled his glass. Nathan refilled it. Faust drank. “But to ask why,” he continued, “implies that things happen for a purpose, and they do not. There is no purpose, no direction, no guidance to events. Nothing means anything. The world is a howling desert of meaningless, and reason is useless before it. There is only blind event.” He stared off into the bleak landscapes of the future while Nathan refilled his glass and refilled his glass and refilled his glass. He saw so clearly now, without delusion or hope. It was a crystal night of the soul.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The problem was that when all you’re trying to do is survive, the universe seems a cold and hostile place. We needed a purpose. To distract us from our awareness of being a single spark of human warmth in an infinite expanse of silence. One small candle in the infinite night of being.” “Do you really think science is purpose enough?” “Yes, I do. I always have. Maybe it’s because I was a lonely kid, and there were times that learning things was all that kept me going. The search for truth is not an unworthy reason to keep going.” “You make it sound so arbitrary.” “Maybe it is. Yet I persist in believing that knowledge is better than ignorance.”
Michael Swanwick (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source