Science Fiction Quote of the Week

It’s 2114, just 2114, and people like you are living as if it’s the end of the world.
--Ruth in Barry N. Malzberg’s “The Wonderful, All-Purpose Transmogrifier”

Science Fiction Quote of the Week

In matching, they adopt a plan which appears to us very extravagant, yet is constantly observed among them and accounted very wise. Before marriage, a grave matron presenteth the bride (be she virgin or widow) naked, to the bridegroom; and after that, some grave man presenteth the bridegroom naked to the bride. We laughed at this, and condemned it as very indecent. They, on the other hand, wondered at the folly of mankind in all other countries; who, if they buy but an inferior horse, examine him all over and take off his trappings; yet a wife, on whom dependeth the happiness of the remainder of life, they take upon trust, regarding only her face, and leaving the rest of her body covered, where contagious and loathsome disorders may lie concealed. All men are not so wise as to choose a woman only for her good qualities; and even the wise consider the body as adding not a little to the mind. It is certain the clothes may conceal some deformity which may alienate a man from his wife when it is too late to part with her. If such a thing be discovered after marriage, he hath no remedy but patience. They therefore think it reasonable, that good care should be taken to guard against such mischievous deception.
--Thomas More, Utopia

Science Fiction Quote of the Week

Some people recovered spontaneously and some were saved by prayers. Not everyone died who was infected. The death rate for the pneumonic plague was only ninety percent.
--Connie Willis, Doomsday Book

Science Fiction Quote of the Week

How can I describe my emotions at this catastrophe, or how delineate the wretch whom with such infinite pains and care I had endeavoured to form? His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful! Great god, His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscle and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same colour as the dun white sockets in which they were set, his shrivelled complexion, and straight black lips.
--Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

Science Fiction Quote of the Week

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.
--Isaac Asimov, Foundation

Science Fiction Quote of the Week

As he once put it, with his usual technical exactitude, "If the poet's name is writ in water, the journalist's is writ in ether."
--Chapman Pincher, Not with a Bang

Science Fiction Quote of the Week

As she pours the wine he watches her closely, thinking of that other Elizabeth, his Elizabeth, thinking how well he knows her body, the supple play of muscles in her back, the sleek texture of her skin, the firmness of her flesh, and he flashes instantly to their strange, absurdly romantic meeting years ago, that June when he had gone off alone into the Sierra high country for a week of backpacking and, following heaps of stones that he had wrongly taken to be trail markers, had come to a place well off the path, a private place, a cool dark glacial lake rimmed by brilliant patches of late-lying snow, and had begun to make camp, and had become suddenly aware of someone's else pack thirty yards away, and a pile of discarded clothing on the shore, and then had seen her, swimming just beyond a pine-topped point, heading toward land, rising like Venus from the water, naked, noticing him, startled by his presence, apprehensive for a moment but then immediately making the best of it, relaxing, smiling, standing unashamed shin-deep in the chilly shallows and inviting him to join her for a swim.
--Robert Silverberg, “Trips”

Science Fiction Quote of the Week

"Justice to you may not be justice to me," Absalom said, drawing designs on the tablecloth with his fingernail.
--Henry Kuttner, "Absalom"

Science Fiction Quote of the Week

Olava said her cult would never endorse killing. Semyonus said the same for his government.

"In previous times," said Lewus,"Olava's church has ordered people killed, and Semyonus' government now does it. You should know that. I am not the only person with a sin."

"You think I needed to be told these things, Lewus?" I said.
--Richard Ben Sapir, The Far Arena

Science Fiction Quote of the Week

"Peace" is a condition in which no civilian pays any attention to military casualties which do not achieve page-one, lead-story prominence -- unless that civilian is a close relative of one of the casualties. But, if there ever was a time in history when "peace" meant that there was no fighting going on, I have been unable to find out about it.
--Juan Rico in Robert A. Heinlein's Starship Troopers

Science Fiction Quote of the Week

X –- This day when it had light mother called me a retch. You retch she said. I saw in her eyes the anger. I wonder what it is a retch.
--Richard Matheson, "Born of Man and Woman"

Science Fiction Quote of the Week

It must be the case that, under the inspiration of extreme suffering, everyone becomes multilingual.
--Jules Verne, Journey to the Center of the Earth

Science Fiction Quote of the Week

There is a technical term for someone who confuses the opinions of a character in a book with those of the author. That term is idiot.
--S.M. Stirling, Conquistador

Science Fiction Quote of the Week

My only regret is that I have but one life to give for my Christmas present.
--William Tenn, "Child’s Play"

Science Fiction Quote of the Week

“What‘s that again, lover?” he murmured. “Do my ears deceive me or are you sounding like one of those lousy radical politicians? Where’d you pick up that kind of talk, anyway -- you got ancestors in the GOP, maybe?”
--Robert Bloch, Sneak Preview

Science Fiction Quote of the Week

No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.
--H. G. Wells, The War of the Worlds

Science Fiction Quote of the Week

And the sun was big and fiery and merciless, and it was always in the sky and you couldn’t get away from it.
--Ray Bradbury, “The Rocket Man”

Science Fiction Quote of the Week

Listen. When I was a youngster -- there were no dreamies then -- I knew a fellow who wrote television scripts. He would complain to me bitterly that when someone met him for the first time and found out who he was, they would say, “Where do you get those crazy ideas?”

They honestly didn’t know. To them it was an impossibility to even think of one of them. So what could my friend say? He used to talk to me about it and tell me: “Could I say, 'I don’t know'? When I go to bed, I can’t sleep for ideas dancing in my head. When I shave, I cut myself; when I talk, I lose track of what I’m saying; when I drive, I take my life in my hands. And always because ideas, situations, dialogues are spinning and twisting in my mind. I can’t tell you where I get my ideas. Can you tell me, maybe, your trick of not getting ideas, so I, too, can have a little peace?”
--Jesse Weill in Isaac Asimov’s “Dreaming Is a Private Thing”

Science Fiction Quote of the Week

There‘s only one proper uniform for a bride on her wedding night.
--Harry Turtledove, WorldWar: Tilting the Balance

Science Fiction Quote of the Week

Andy traded a glance with the Mayor. “Look, Freeborn,” he said gently, “you don’t seem to get the point. We don’t want such gadgets. It isn’t worthwhile scheming and working to get more than we have, not while there are girls to love in springtime and deer to hunt in fall. And when we do work, we’d rather work for ourselves, not for somebody else, whether you call the somebody else a capitalist or the people. Now let’s go sit down and take it easy before lunch.”
--Poul Anderson, “The Last of the Deliverers”