# Quote — Charles Sheffield, The Compleat McAndrew

> It’s no surprise that there are people like Anna Griss in the world. There always have been. Go back fifty thousand years, to a time when most of us were just grubbing along, looking for a decent bush of ripe berries or a fresher lump of meat. A few, like McAndrew, were busy inventing language or numbers, or painting the walls of the cave. And some, just a handful but too many in every generation, were seeking an edge over the rest of us: Water access, or mating rules, or restricted entry to heaven. No matter how few they were, Anna Griss would have been one of them.

- Author: [Charles Sheffield](https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-sheffield.md)
- Book: [The Compleat McAndrew](https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-sheffield/the-compleat-mcandrew.md)
- Page: 196
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Charles_Sheffield#The_Compleat_McAndrew_(2000)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-sheffield/the-compleat-mcandrew/its-no-surprise

## More from this book

> As usual he looked tired, but that was normal. Geniuses worked harder than anyone else, not less hard.

p. 68 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-sheffield/the-compleat-mcandrew/as-usual-he-looked.md)

> The mills of bureaucracy may or may not grind fine, but they certainly grind exceeding slow.

p. 240 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-sheffield/the-compleat-mcandrew/the-mills-of-bureaucracy.md)

> The first space colonies had been conceived as utopias, planned by Earth idealists who wouldn’t learn from history. New frontiers may attract visionaries, but more than that they attract oddities. Anyone who is more than three sigma away from the norm, in any direction, seems to finish out there on the frontier. No surprise in that. If a person can’t fit, for whatever reason, he’ll move away from the main group of humanity. They’ll push him, and he’ll want to go.

p. 69 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/charles-sheffield/the-compleat-mcandrew/the-first-space.md)