Greg Bear

Life on earth is hard. Competition for the necessities of life is fierce. How ridiculous to believe that the law of harsh survival would not be true elsewhere, or that it would be negated by the progress of technology in an advanced civilization...

A Stellar’s jay hopped along behind him, watching closely for dropped crumbs. “It’s dark,” he told the bird. “Go to sleep. I've eaten already. Where were you? No food now.” The bird persisted, however; it knew humans were liars.

Having one’s eyes opened doesn’t make one grateful.

“We’d like to agree with you.” He glanced at Arthur.

“We can’t, however,” Arthur said.

“For the moment, then, amicable disagreement and open minds.”

Apocalypse could not be repealed by the democratic process.

“It’s not impossible,” Minelli said.

“No,” Edward admitted, “but it’s paranoid as hell, and that’s the last thing we need, more fear.”

“That’s insane,” Lanier said.

“Not very. It’s politics.”

Altruism is masked self-interest. Aggressive self-interest is a masked urge to self-destruction.

We are born in ignorance, we die in ignorance, but maybe sometimes we learn something important and pass it along to others before we die. Or we write it down in a little book.

Sometimes I feel like a beetle crawling through a fusion power plant. I can feel a certain amount, see a certain amount, but I sure as hell don’t understand everything.

I sometimes think we deserve to die, we’re all so goddamned stupid.

Grief is not productive. It simply represents an inefficiency in accepting change of status.