sandra > sandra's Quotes

“What does a scanner see? he asked himself. I mean, really see? Into the head? Down into the heart? Does a passive infrared scanner like they used to use or a cube-type holo-scanner like they use these days, the latest thing, see into me - into us - clearly or darkly? I hope it does, he thought, see clearly, because I can't any longer these days see into myself. I see only murk. Murk outside; murk inside. I hope, for everyone's sake, the scanners do better. Because, he thought, if the scanner sees only darkly, the way I myself do, then we are cursed, cursed again and like we have been continually, and we'll wind up dead this way, knowing very little and getting that little fragment wrong too.”
― Philip K. Dick, A Scanner Darkly

“An intellectual is a person who has discovered something more interesting than sex.”
― Aldous Huxley

“Insanity is relative. It depends on who has who locked in what cage.”
― Ray Bradbury

“Light is the left hand of darkness
and darkness the right hand of light.
Two are one, life and death, lying
together like lovers in kemmer,
like hands joined together,
like the end and the way.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness

“I mean, maybe I am crazy. I mean, maybe. But if this is all there is, then I don't want to be sane.”
― Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere

“Maybe this world is another planet’s hell.”
― Aldous Huxley

“Oh how I hate people!”
― Mervyn Peake, Titus Groan

“Change isn't easy... changing the way you live means changing what you believe about life. That's hard... When we make our own misery, we sometimes cling to it even when we want so bad to change because the misery is something we know. The misery is comfortable.”
― Dean Koontz

“We are an impossibility in an impossible universe.”
― Ray Bradbury

“You cannot change what you are, only what you do.”
― Philip Pullman, The Golden Compass

“A number of years ago, when I was a freshly-appointed instructor, I met, for the first time, a certain eminent historian of science. At the time I could only regard him with tolerant condescension.

I was sorry of the man who, it seemed to me, was forced to hover about the edges of science. He was compelled to shiver endlessly in the outskirts, getting only feeble warmth from the distant sun of science- in-progress; while I, just beginning my research, was bathed in the heady liquid heat up at the very center of the glow.

In a lifetime of being wrong at many a point, I was never more wrong. It was I, not he, who was wandering in the periphery. It was he, not I, who lived in the blaze.

I had fallen victim to the fallacy of the 'growing edge;' the belief that only the very frontier of scientific advance counted; that everything that had been left behind by that advance was faded and dead.

But is that true? Because a tree in spring buds and comes greenly into leaf, are those leaves therefore the tree? If the newborn twigs and their leaves were all that existed, they would form a vague halo of green suspended in mid-air, but surely that is not the tree. The leaves, by themselves, are no more than trivial fluttering decoration. It is the trunk and limbs that give the tree its grandeur and the leaves themselves their meaning.

There is not a discovery in science, however revolutionary, however sparkling with insight, that does not arise out of what went before. 'If I have seen further than other men,' said Isaac Newton, 'it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants.”
― Isaac Asimov, Adding a Dimension: Seventeen Essays on the History of Science

“But how can you walk away from something and still come back to it?”
― Neil Gaiman, Coraline

“The surest way to work up a crusade in favor of some good cause is to promise people they will have a chance of maltreating someone. To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behavior 'righteous indignation' — this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats.”
― Aldous Huxley, Crome Yellow

“Sometimes you wake up. Sometimes the fall kills you. And sometimes, when you fall, you fly.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 6: Fables & Reflections

“Any fool can be happy. It takes a man with real heart to make beauty out of the stuff that makes us weep.”
― Clive Barker, Abarat: Days of Magic, Nights of War

“Everybody is a book of blood; wherever we're opened, we're red.”
― Clive Barker, Books of Blood: Volumes One to Three

“The mystery of life isn't a problem to solve, but a reality to experience.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“There is no such thing as a true tale. Truth has many faces and the truth is like to the old road to Avalon; it depends on your own will, and your own thoughts, whither the road will take you.”
― Marion Zimmer Bradley, The Mists of Avalon

“Education is no substitute for intelligence.”
― Frank Herbert

“The universe did not invent justice. Man did. Unfortunately, man must reside in the universe.”
― Roger Zelazny, The Dream Master

“Then you must reconcile yourself to the fact that something is always hurt by any change. If you do this, you will not be hurt yourself.”
― Roger Zelazny, Power & Light

“Imagine being sentient but not alive. Seeing and even knowing, but not alive. Just looking out. Recognizing but not being alive. A person can die and still go on. Sometimes what looks out at you from a person's eyes maybe died back in childhood.”
― Philip K. Dick, A Scanner Darkly

“This isn't about what is . . . it's about what people think is. It's all imaginary anyway. That's why it's important. People only fight over imaginary things.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods

“You musn’t be afraid of the dark.’
‘I’m not,’ said Shadow. ‘I’m afraid of the people in the dark.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods

“Don't start anything you're not prepared to finish.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods

“He was no longer scared of what tomorrow might bring because yesterday has brought it.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods

“All we have to believe with is our senses, the tools we use to perceive the world: our sight, our touch, our memory. If they lie to us, then nothing can be trusted. And even if we do not believe, then still we cannot travel in any other way than the road our senses show us; and we must walk that road to the end.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods

“He was alone in the darkness once more, but the darkness became brighter and brighter until it was burning like the sun.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods

“I am clever enough to know that I am clever.”
― Mervyn Peake, Titus Groan

“We're all fools," said Clemens, "all the time. It's just we're a different kind each day. We think, I'm not a fool today. I've learned my lesson. I was a fool yesterday but not this morning. Then tomorrow we find out that, yes, we were a fool today too. I think the only way we can grow and get on in this world is to accept the fact we're not perfect and live accordingly.”
― Ray Bradbury, The Illustrated Man