Itay > Itay's Quotes

“Some women, Commander Norton had decided long ago, should not be allowed aboard ship; weightlessness did things to their breasts that were too damn distracting. It was bad enough when they were motionless; but when they started to move, and sympathetic vibrations set in, it was more than any warm-blooded male should be asked to take. Some women, Commander Norton had decided long ago, should not be allowed aboard ship; weightlessness did things to their breasts that were too damn distracting. It was bad enough when they were motionless; but when they started to move, and sympathetic vibrations set in, it was more than any warm-blooded male should be asked to take. He was quite sure that at least one serious space accident had been caused by acute crew distraction, after the transit of a well-upholstered lady officer through the control cabin.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, Rendezvous with Rama

“I don't know that I ever wanted greatness on its own. It seems rather like wanting to be an engineer, rather than wanting to design something - or wanting to be a writer, rather than wanting to write. It should be a by-product, not a thing in itself. Otherwise, it's just an ego trip.”
― Roger Zelazny

“I expect you are wondering why I had not considered the possibility of unemployment. The reason being that my mind had a very different recollection of what unemployed men looked like. The jobless man I remembered from the past went out onto the street with a placard around his neck that read “Looking for any type of work”. When he’d had enough of drifting fruitlessly around in this manner, he would remove the placard, grab a red flag handed to him by a loitering Bolshevist, and return to the street.”
― Timur Vermes

“Later, as he sat on his balcony eating the dog, Dr Robert Laing reflected on the unusual events that had taken place within this huge apartment building during the previous three months.”
― J.G. Ballard

“The Germans and the dog were engaged in a military operation which had an amusingly self explanatory name, a human enterprise which is seldom described in detail, whose name alone, when reported as new or history, gives many war enthusiasts a sort of post-coital satisfaction. It is, in the imagination of combat's fans, the divinely listless loveplay that follows the orgasm of victory. It is called "mopping up.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“Trout, incidentally, had written a book about a money tree. It had twenty-dollar bills for leaves. Its flowers were government bonds. Its fruit was diamonds. It attracted human beings who killed each other around the roots and made very good fertilizer.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“We've already established whoever is writing us is an asshole.”
― John Scalzi, Redshirts

“Now What?" Kerensky said. "We wait," Dahl said. "For how long?" Kerensky said, " As long as dramatically appropriate," Dahl said.”
― John Scalzi, Redshirts

“I tried to remain skeptical. I reminded myself that I was a man of science, even if I did usually get a C in it.”
― Ernest Cline, Armada

“The teachers told the children that this was when their continent was discovered by human beings. Actually, millions of human beings were already living full and imaginative lives on the continent in 1492. That was simply the year in which sea pirates began to cheat and rob and kill them.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions

“This is a very bad book you’re writing,” I said to myself behind my leaks.

“I know,” I said.

“You’re afraid you’ll kill yourself the way your mother did,” I said.

“I know,” I said.

There in the cocktail lounge, peering out through my leaks at a world of my own invention, I mouthed this word: schizophrenia. The sound and appearance of the word had fascinated me for many years. It sounded and looked to me like a human being sneezing in a blizzard of soapflakes.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions

“Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers

“The thing about rabbits, sir, is that everybody has one. I'd like to see you step up to the goat-class where I feel you belong. Frankly you look more like a goat man to me.”
― Philip K. Dick

“So here we were, fifty men and fifty women, with IQs over 150 and bodies of unusual health and strength, slogging elitely through the mud and slush of central Missouri, reflecting on the usefulness of our skill in building bridges on worlds where the only fluid is an occasional standing pool of liquid helium.”
― Joe Haldeman, The Forever War

“Bad books on writing tell you to "WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW", a solemn and totally false adage that is the reason there exist so many mediocre novels about English professors contemplating adultery.”
― Joe Haldeman

“The 1143-year-long war hand begun on false pretenses and only because the two races were unable to communicate.

Once they could talk, the first question was 'Why did you start this thing?' and the answer was 'Me?”
― Joe Haldeman, The Forever War

“When you attack a tyranny you must expect it to fight back.”
― Philip K. Dick, Radio Free Albemuth

“They say the first thing to go when you're old is your legs or your eyesight. It isn't true. The first thing to go is parallel parking.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Timequake

“If you really want to hurt your parents and you don't have nerve enough to be homosexual, the least you can do is go into the arts.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout.”
― Jonathan Swift

“[The Universe] does not care, and even with all our science there are some disasters that we can not avert. All evil and good is petty before nature. Personally, we take comfort from this, that there is a universe to admire that can not be twisted to villainy or good, but which simply is.”
― Vernor Vinge, A Fire Upon the Deep

“In contrast to the “everyday smiley catalog girl” or the “generically” handsome guy, the editorial model is seen as “unique” and “strong.” An editorial model is typically described as having an unusual or, to use a term that comes up often in the business, an “edgy” look. Producers define edgy as an “atypical” or an “odd” kind of quality.

Everyone in the fi eld had a tough time putting edgy into words. Beyond its rudimentary physical markers of youth and skinniness, edgy is an amorphous quality, perhaps most easily defi ned negatively. Edgy
is not commercially pretty but is code for a look that departs from conventional norms of attractiveness. It is the uncanny, sitting on the border between beautiful and ugly, familiar and strange, at once attracting and repulsing its viewer.”
― Ashley Mears, Pricing Beauty: The Making of a Fashion Model

“All God's children are not beautiful. Most of God's children are, in fact, barely presentable.”
― Fran Lebowitz, Metropolitan Life/Social Studies