Shadow’s End

Quotes

1. Sex was pleasurable, sure, but survival was sweeter still.

   p. 133

2. 

   “That’s different. That’s paradise. Like it was on Breadh.”

   “Were there many people on Breadh?”

   Snark laughed, abruptly joyous. “Hardly any! That’s what made it paradise!”

   p. 384

3. 

   Does the worm on the hook expect to be rescued simply because the fish have eaten all the other worms?

   p. 132

4. 

   “Will you go home again?”

   Would I go home again? To the lies the songfathers told? To the pain of the House Without a Name? To that terrible destiny for my daughters? To connivance at that evil by my sons? To sell truth and wisdom short in order to buy the false hope of immortality?

   Somehow I got to my feet.

   “No,” I cried. My voice was the cry of a small bird against that mighty thunder. Still I cried, “No. I will not!”

   p. 428

5. 

   “Most gods of most worlds have human faces.”

   “Because men make them in their image,” Lutha remarked, somewhat bitterly. “To grant mankind license to do what we would do anyway.”

   p. 421

6. 

   Godmongers have always found it easy to pay for their beliefs with women’s lives.…

   p. 300

7. 

   “The first rule of governance is never to choose who to sacrifice,” snarled the Procurator. “Or, at least, never to be seen to choose. Death and dismemberment must always be…inadvertent. Everybody’s fault or nobody’s fault!”

   p. 82

8. 

   Some can see no farther than their mirrors. What wears another face must go unseen.

   p. 439

9. 

   Blind faith in somebody stepping in to fix things eliminates a lot of emotional stress, so blind faith is what most people have!

   p. 81

10. 

    “Tell them they may go. I don’t approve of anything they’re doing.”

    Angered, the minister growled: “The Firster godmongers pray for you daily in your blindness, Majesty. Man is meant to procreate! We were given the universe to fill. What are a few animals, a few trees in the face of our destiny?”

    p. 72

11. 

    Don’t take me for a fool, lovely girl. We fat old things have not laid aside our brains with our silhouettes.

    p. 324

12. 

    What he’d said wasn’t inaccurate; it was simply a ridiculous understatement.

    p. 274

13. 

    Pain and loss. Hope dimmed. Ambition quenched. Love becoming an unfunny joke on the lovers! Body saying aye; mind saying nay; now saying can; future saying can’t.

    p. 406

14. 

    “Go to the simul and slap people around, kill people, that’s what you want. Do it! But you can’t do it out here!”

    It sounded great, but nobody stayed dead in a simul! How could you get any satisfaction killing somebody who didn’t stay dead?

    p. 40

15. 

    “He has brain waves!” she shouted.

    “He has the same kind of brain waves as chickens. As a matter of fact, his brain waves are virtually indistinguishable from those of chickens.”

    “He’s not a chicken. He’s a human being!”

    Leelson’s face was very pale, his mouth was hard. “Morphologically, he’s a human being. Mentally, he’s a chicken.”

    p. 282

16. 

    Fearful people develop their religions as protective devices, ways to manipulate hostile environments, formulas for identifying and defeating their enemies. The more fearful people are, the more enemies they have, the more adversarial language they use.

    p. 109

17. 

    Also, the god often resembles his followers in behavior and feelings. Angry people have angry gods and vindictive people have vindictive gods, and so forth.

    p. 109

18. 

    “If you are less uncontrolled, you won’t find yourself rolling around on the floor making infant noises and attracting the scorn and derision of your fellows.”

    “Damn motherfuckers ain my fellows.”

    “What did you say?”

    “I said I feel little collegiality for those sharing my conditions of servitude.”

    p. 37

19. 

    Those who encounter chains of events at two disparate points, without observing the connections, think they have observed coincidence when they have, in fact, seen only consequence.

    p. 336

20. 

    Every hundred years they would be disillusioned, and each time they would swear to hide their disillusionment in order to retain their power. “We won’t tell anyone,” they’d say. “We won’t let anyone know. We’ll deny it. We’ll defend the traditional teachings!”

    Such things that happened before! Men in power had made mistakes or foolish claims and spent the rest of their lives and their successors’ lives defending the indefensible, or hiding it.

    p. 344

21. 

    Do not wish to live forever. Do not believe that every man-shaped thing is holier than something else. Do not look into the mirror to see the face of God.

    p. 453

22. 

    As the Gauphin taught, people are ridiculous! We have language and history, we have technology and philosophy, and we still have not achieved good sense and self-control!

    p. 315

23. 

    “An itchy man is prey to discontent; he’ll suage his flea bites with the blood of kings.”

    Surely the common man wouldn’t want that!”

    “What common men want most is beer and sex, without disturbances.”

    p. 140

24. 

    Despite Lutha’s undoubted intelligence, she was constantly exploding like fireworks, laughing or crying, passionate about every trifle. On Dinadh, we think of such behavior as typical of children, not serious adults.

    p. 306

25. 

    The stories of Old-earth are shared among the people of Old-earth. Even I, Saluez, can identify elephant and whale, ostrich and eagle, serpent and wolf, though they exist no longer. I know that they were and now are not, because of mankind.

    p. 411

26. 

    “Even pain,” said the king, with no intention of being prophetic, “even pain is preferable to dying of unrelieved ennui.”

    p. 140

That’s all the quotes.

26 quotes in the collection · come back when we add more