Steel Beach Quotes

“The public had an endless appetite for stories like that. Subconsciously, I think they think the gods of luck will favor them when the tromp of doom starts to thump. As for survivor interviews, I find them very boring, but I'm apparently in the minority. At least half of them had this to say: "God was watching over me." Most of those people didn't even believe in a god. This is the deity-as-hit-man view of theology. What I always thought was, if God was looking out for you, he must have had a real hard-on for all those folks he belted into the etheric like so many rubbery javelins.”
― John Varley, Steel Beach

“Ain’t got no strawberries,” the bartender said. “Then go out and kill some!”
― John Varley, Steel Beach

“Looking around me, I saw that all my colleagues were busy at the same task. Eyes were rolled up, mouths hung open, here and there a finger twitched. It had to be either a day trip from the Catatonic Academy, or the modern press at work.”
― John Varley, Steel Beach

“There is a certain concentrated, avid-for-blood look that appears on the faces of reporters on the trail of a very big story that you'd have to visit the big cat house at the zoo to see duplicated in its primal state. From the look on Brenda's face, if a tiger was standing between her and this story right now, the cat would soon have a tall-journalist-sized hole in him.”
― John Varley, Steel Beach

“How are you, Hildy? Having a good time? Getting laid?” “Just did, thank you.”
― John Varley, Steel Beach

“think we ought to keep some fighting skills alive in case we meet some disagreeable critters we can fight.” Brenda sat up, wide-eyed. “You’re a Heinleiner,” she said. It was MacDonald’s turn to”
― John Varley, Steel Beach

“It would be good to be a carpenter, I thought. Maybe I’d quit the newspaper business. Then the blade broke and jammed into the wood. My palm slipped off the knob in front and tried to skate across the fresh-planed surface, driving long splinters into my skin. The plane clattered off the board and went for my toe with the hellish accuracy of a pain-guided missile.”
― John Varley, Steel Beach

“Those pecs could use some more work,” I told the gorilla hybrid, and got out in a hurry.”
― John Varley, Steel Beach

“being who answered the phone when a given person shouted “Hey, CC!”
― John Varley, Steel Beach

“If Scheherazade could do it, why not Hildy Johnson?”
― John Varley, Steel Beach

“But sexual preference seems to be something that happens to you, not something you elect. The fact is, when I’m a boy I’m intensely interested in girls, and have little or no interest in other boys, and vice versa when I’m a girl. I have friends who are precisely the opposite, who are homo-oriented in both sexes.”
― John Varley, Steel Beach

“I keep living for the same reasons I think so many of us do. I’m curious about what happens next.”
― John Varley, Steel Beach