# Quote — Kim Stanley Robinson, The Years of Rice and Salt

> Rock is much more malleable than ideas.

- Author: [Kim Stanley Robinson](https://www.leafyquotes.com/kim-stanley-robinson.md)
- Book: [The Years of Rice and Salt](https://www.leafyquotes.com/kim-stanley-robinson/the-years-of-rice-and-salt.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Kim_Stanley_Robinson#The_Years_of_Rice_and_Salt_(2002)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/kim-stanley-robinson/the-years-of-rice-and-salt/rock-is-much

## More from this book

> History till now has been like women's periods, a little egg of possibility, hidden in the ordinary material of life, with tiny barbarian hordes maybe charging in, trying to find it, failing, fighting each other—finally a bloody mess ends that chance, and everything has to start all over.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/kim-stanley-robinson/the-years-of-rice-and-salt/history-till-now.md)

> What kind of story am I going to give them next? Because that's what we are to other people, boy, we are their gossip. That's all civilization is, a giant mill grinding out gossip. And so I could be the story of the man who rode high and fell hard, and had his spirit broken and crawled off into a hole like a dog, to die as soon as he could manage it. Or I could be the story of a man who rode high and fell hard, and then got up defiant, and walked away in a new direction.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/kim-stanley-robinson/the-years-of-rice-and-salt/what-kind-of-story.md)

> Plague was plague, and could not be treated lightly. And this plague was obviously worse than most, having killed everyone in the region.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/kim-stanley-robinson/the-years-of-rice-and-salt/plague-was-plague.md)