The Children of the Company Quotes

“He is aware that he feels a vague respect for the woman. Mendoza, at least, had never done the reasonable thing, never settled for less, but held to her one insane passion even as it had dragged her into the flames. Such a valuable quality in a pawn.”
― Kage Baker, The Children of the Company

“If a place can hold the memory of death, surely the badlands of Montana retained it. Labienus peered from the window the Silverbolt as it bounced over bare rusty earth and rock, trying to imagine what it had been like on that hellacious Cretaceous day when the end had come for them all: the maiasaur with its touching maternal concern, the vicious tyrannosaur no less a good mother, the little sneaking egg thieves with no shred of moral respectability whatsoever, all the rumbling honking thundering life that had held sway since forever. Even if they'd had the brains to see it coming, how could any of them have understood the End? What, for us? Rulers of the earth for the last hundred and sixty million years?

But the earth had understood, and remembered still, and offered up white bones still bedded in clay red as fresh meat for the edification of its present rulers, who utterly failed to take the hint.”
― Kage Baker, The Children of the Company

“I must protest this policy, he transmitted in silence. Why shouldn't they be allowed to read their own books? Aren't we preserving these things for THEM, after all?

Old fellow, you must understand, I replied as casually as I could. […]you've been down among them yourself. You know the villainy of which they're capable. Destructive little Barbary apes for the most part, and human intelligence only makes them worse. How many libraries have you seen burned in your time?

But the mortals built the libraries too, argued Lewis[…] It takes thousands of them to create an archive of human wisdom; only one to set a torch to it. Wouldn't you have to say, then, that the work of the librarians is more typical of mortal behavior than the work of the arsonist?”
― Kage Baker, The Children of the Company