A Deepness in the Sky (Zones of Thought, #2)

by Vernor Vinge

All the glib speeches and bravado he’d spent the last year planning were swept from his mind, his conversation reduced to awkward starts and stops.

The essence of real creativity is a certain playfulness, a flitting from idea to idea without getting bogged down by fixated demands. Of course, you don’t always get what you thought you were asking for. From this era on, I think invention will be the parent of necessity—and not the other way around.”

Funny how the least attempt at deception always seemed to make life more complicated.

You want a deepness that endures, a deepness that Spiderkind can depend on? Pedure, there is a deepness in the sky, and it extends forever.”

She and Gokna were by far the best manipulators in the whole family. That was why they got along so badly with each other.

“You really like stabilizing the intrinsically unstable, don’t you,

As a child, Tomas Nau had learned an important rule: Whatever else, never lie to yourself.

If you avoided all other threats, the complexity of your own successes would eventually get you.

What do you do when your dream dies?

What do you do when your dream dies? Dreams die in every life. Everyone gets old. There is promise in the beginning when life seems so bright. The promise fades when the years get short.

It was a far cry from breaking the wheel of history, but there was a strange, rising pleasure in doing what felt wholly right.