Across a Billion Years Quotes

“Part of the prejudice thing is that the victim has to be somebody weaker than you in numbers, but somebody you secretly admire or fear.”
― Robert Silverberg, Across a Billion Years

“I don’t think I can even imagine what a culture that’s been developing steadily for a billion years ought to be like. Disembodied electrical essences, maybe. Ghostly creatures flitting in and out of the eighth, ninth, and tenth dimensions. Cosmic minds that know all, perceive all, understand all. Maybe”
― Robert Silverberg, Across a Billion Years

“And so,” Kelly said, “you godlike ones show your godlike natures by feeling superior to the artificial humans you create. Even though androids outlive you and outperform you in most ways.” “We feel superior to you and inferior at the same time, Kelly. And that’s why most of us dislike and distrust you.” She pondered that. “How intricate you naturals can be! Why must you be so concerned about superiority and inferiority? Why not simply accept all distinctions and concentrate on matters of real importance?”
― Robert Silverberg, Across a Billion Years

“any sinner can find redemption if the yield of his sin is spectacular enough. Our”
― Robert Silverberg, Across a Billion Years

“(Question: Is a man more loathsome if he succeeds in Having His Way with a woman, or if he’s such a spinless vidj that he botches the job? Don’t bother answering.)”
― Robert Silverberg, Across a Billion Years

“What I object to is having someone who is professionally inferior jacked into an expedition simply for the sake of racial balance.”
― Robert Silverberg, Across a Billion Years

“This business of humanity having two different sexes makes for all kinds of headaches.”
― Robert Silverberg, Across a Billion Years

“We are fighting that force in the universe that nudges everything toward chaos. I mean that we are at war with time; we are enemies of entropy; we seek to snatch back those things that have been taken from us by the years—the childhood toys, the friends and relatives who are gone, the events of the past—everything, we struggle to recapture everything, back to the beginning of creation, out of this need not to let anything slip away.”
― Robert Silverberg, Across a Billion Years

“naturally they hate each other to a high-frequency zing.”
― Robert Silverberg, Across a Billion Years

“It’s because I hate to think that anything goes to waste. I mean, that anything that was ever important or valuable or precious to somebody is just buried and forgotten about. I want to salvage all those things and let them be important to somebody again … so they won’t feel neglected.”
― Robert Silverberg, Across a Billion Years