Michael Bishop

Quotes

1. He forgave these Tropemen, then felt contempt for himself for the presumption of extending forgiveness, then forgave again, then cursed his own vanity, forgave once more, condemned his presumption, and at last forgave even himself.

   p. 265

2. 

   God could hardly damn me for a coward, great cosmic exemplar of laissez-faire that he is.

   p. 34

3. 

   “Magistrate, a problem doesn’t cease to exist simply because you cease to consider it a problem.”

   ”Very often, Deputy Foutlif, it does.”

   p. 200

4. 

   Coercion is the tool of the desperate.

   p. 64

5. 

   Like all such prophecies, it’s impressive only if not examined too closely.

   p. 249

6. 

   Both God and man hold each other in equally beautiful contempt.

   p. 196

7. 

   I have thought a little about a telepathic community, and I have decided that it would most likely create either a thoroughly paranoiac or a thoroughly homogeneous unit of individuals. Complete suspicion and hostility in the one instance, total harmony and concord in the other. I do not like either alternative.

   p. 35

8. 

   You can’t go home again, particularly if you never had one.

   p. 206

9. 

   “Nature has its own logic, or so brother Peter tells us.”

   “The logic of chance—amoral and sometimes inaccurate.”

   “Well, Foutlif, we Earthmen are products of the ‘natural’ process; consequently, you shouldn’t be surprised to find us both of those things at times—amoral and inaccurate.”

   p. 83

10. 

    Time, as it always does, passed.

    p. 316

11. 

    Necessary is often the mother of light fingers instead of invention.

    p. 76

12. 

    Paleoanthropologists were congenitally media-oriented.

    p. 147