The Children of the Sky Quotes

“Politics is good; when it works properly, disagreements get solved without people beating each other up. But when a regime knows its days are numbered, there's always the chance it may use its position to change the rules and make the debate it is losing irrelevant.”
― Vernor Vinge, The Children of the Sky

“Most civilizations had more fiction than they did real history.”
― Vernor Vinge, The Children of the Sky

“You are enjoying the gift of genius. When ordinary people are confronted with multiple tragedies, the pain scarcely increases. They simple can't feel the extra burdens. But you have a greater capacity for suffering.”
― Vernor Vinge, The Children of the Sky

“Sometimes, sitting here in the dark, slowly slowly creating strategy, she wondered if she was only fooling herself to think her plans were clever.”
― Vernor Vinge, The Children of the Sky

“Tycoon had a peddler's talent for using words to redefine reality.”
― Vernor Vinge, The Children of the Sky

“Enormous cemeteries existed among sedentary civilizations, where the weight of the past grew larger than any present time.”
― Vernor Vinge, The Children of the Sky

“Cameras could be a coat of paint, or critters that looked like insects, or even a bacterial infection. Delivery of the information to the observer could be even stranger, a diffuse cloud of perturbations—acoustic, visual, thermal—that took enormous processing to reconstruct.”
― Vernor Vinge, The Children of the Sky

“None of the Tines were limping, except the one she called Dirty Henrik, and he’d had a bad forepaw ever since the rest of his pack got squished in a rock fall.”
― Vernor Vinge, The Children of the Sky

“When Vendacious chased Johanna into the Choir, when the killing swarm knocked her down, the image and the strangeness of her must have spread at near-soundspeed across the city. Here and there, the sight had reached some few who remembered, and mercy percolated back. Just in time.”
― Vernor Vinge, The Children of the Sky

“Sst. Johanna? Are you okay? Telemetry showed a problem with the skiff. Johanna?” It was Nevil’s voice, a loud whisper. She reached for the commset—then froze and tried to be very very quiet. There are betrayals and Betrayals. Until this moment, her worst suspicion was that Nevil had been used by Vendacious. Until this moment, she had not believed that Nevil was capable of Betrayal. She stared into the dark, in the direction of the commset. I don’t have proof even now … only certainty.”
― Vernor Vinge, The Children of the Sky

“But in a year we’ll have ten or twenty of our own processors. By then we’ll be making vision chips. There will be even more tedious work for paws and hands—” “But in ten years, we’ll have local automation.” The machines would be doing the wire-ups. It was the beginning she’d promised the Children. It would stink, but it would be enough: “Then we can start shrinking the feature size.” That was the transition point that had always marked the beginning of technological civilization.”
― Vernor Vinge, The Children of the Sky

“Johanna was looking at her expectantly, and suddenly Ravna realized that the girl thought librarians must be experts at everything.”
― Vernor Vinge, The Children of the Sky

“The young woman threw her parka to the floor. “That fucker! That motherless, shit-eating traitor! That—” From there, Johanna’s criticism became more pointed. There were words Ravna was a little surprised Johanna would know, though maybe in the Straumer dialect they were more mellow than Ravna thought. At last there came a pause in the verbal hellstorm. “You’re talking about Nevil, are you?” Johanna glared at her for almost five seconds as she seemed to struggle for speech. Finally, she said, “In case you haven’t guessed, the wedding is off.”
― Vernor Vinge, The Children of the Sky

“I’m a librarian, not a leader.” “You’re both! Librarians and archeologists have always been the ones to bring civilization back.”
― Vernor Vinge, The Children of the Sky

“Yes,” said Ravna, “on Nyjora.” In the Age of Princesses, there had been the Elder Princess and the Younger, the Techie. The Age of Princesses was the most recent rediscovery of civilization in any known human history—and that civilization was also the ancestor of Ravna’s Sjandra Kei and therefore of Johanna’s Straumli Realm.”
― Vernor Vinge, The Children of the Sky

“And they finally had a use for Chitiratifor’s flashy outfits.”
― Vernor Vinge, The Children of the Sky

“Now on Tines World, the Zone physics was still improving. What was it like thirty lightyears higher? Bili”
― Vernor Vinge, The Children of the Sky

“Even so, Jefri. You recognize that Nevil is evil?” Jefri looked away from her, as if refusing to answer. After a moment, Amdi said, “You know he’s evil, Jefri.” Finally,”
― Vernor Vinge, The Children of the Sky

“Ravna thought a moment. “Sysadmin is the usual term,” she said.”
― Vernor Vinge, The Children of the Sky