The Child Garden Quotes

“Sex complicates, but it is the power of love to simplify.”
― Geoff Ryman, The Child Garden: A Low Comedy

“Literature for me… tries to heal the harm done by stories. (How much harm? Most of the atrocities of history have been created by stories, e.g., the Jews killed Jesus.) I follow Sartre that the freedom the author claims for herself must be shared with the reader. So that would mean that literature is stories that put themselves at the disposal of readers who want to heal themselves. Their healing power lies in their honesty, the freshness of their vision, the new and unexpected things they show, the increase in power and responsibility they give the reader.”
― Geoff Ryman, The Child Garden

“In the silence, nothing was fragmented. There were no separate strands to gather together, to fumble, to complete for attention. In the silence, all of that fell away, and there was only what was here, and what was to be done.”
― Geoff Ryman, The Child Garden: A Low Comedy

“You always use that word "remember",' said Milena. 'You say, "remember, team". You never tell us to think.”
― Geoff Ryman, The Child Garden

“Everything goes, everything is lost, eventually. But if something is good, it doesn't matter what happens. The ending is still happy.”
― Geoff Ryman, The Child Garden: A Low Comedy

“Tyranny is a form of perversion. We come to love it. Every government is a tyranny to a degree, and the more evil it is, the more it is loved. The difficulty lies in judging the degree of tyranny under which you live.”
― Geoff Ryman, The Child Garden: A Low Comedy

“Everything move...you wonder how it all knows where to go. Einstein wondered how birds knew where to migrate to. He thought they might follow lines of light in the sky. He saw everything as lines of light. That's how he was built. So we don't know how he moved, either. Any more than the birds. ”
― Geoff Ryman, The Child Garden: A Low Comedy

“She saw the children. They have been given viruses to educate them. From three weeks old they could speak and do basic arithmetic. By ten, they had been made adult, forced like flowers to bloom early. But they were not flowers of love. They were flowers of work, to be put to work. There was no time.”
― Geoff Ryman, The Child Garden: A Low Comedy

“Milena's eyes seemed to go hot and heavy. Praise made her heartsick; she was so unused to it, and needed it so badly.”
― Geoff Ryman, The Child Garden

“Milena found Cilia outside, holding her bamboo box. Milena hugged her. ‘I’m sorry about your shins,’ she said. Milena lifted the lid of the box, and saw it, the precious paper, ruled in staves. People were generous. Milena had never believed that.”
― Geoff Ryman, The Child Garden

“The music comes out of the silence. I don't mind if it goes back in. We come out of the silence...”
― Geoff Ryman, The Child Garden: A Low Comedy

“God, the woman must have been a pain. When she was alive.”
― Geoff Ryman, The Child Garden: A Low Comedy

“Endings don’t mean anything. Meanings lie where the world takes its breath, and that is always now.”
― Geoff Ryman, The Child Garden