Lady Slings the Booze Quotes

“The delusion that one's sexual pattern is The Only Right Way To Be is probably the single most common sexual-psychosis syndrome of this era, and it is virtually almost always the victim's fault. You cannot acquire this delusion by observing reality.”
― Spider Robinson, Lady Slings the Booze

“I was a little afraid you might get all macho about not exposing your wife to danger.
I am. I wouldn't want you to accidentally suffer any harm while beating the shit out of me for trying to keep you out of the party. You could forget and hit me on the head, and hurt your knuckles.”
― Spider Robinson, Lady Slings the Booze

“She hadn’t said it like a joke or hyperbole. “In this country it is,” Arethusa replied seriously, and reached to take the peach juice I gave her, one of her after the other. She smiled at me. “I don’t see why,” Lady Sally said. “Pacifists—and anarchists, and libertarians—specifically repudiate the right of the state to employ armed agents—to protect them from murder, for instance. So shooting one ought to be no worse than a misdemeanor. ‘Disturbing the peace,’ say, or ‘frivolous discharge of a firearm.’ ” “ ‘Unlicensed hunting,’ maybe,” I suggested. “They’re not restricted,” she pointed out. “As long as you eat the meat, and clean up after…” “I’m particular about what I eat,” I said. “But I will kill this bunch. If you can help me track ’em.” “Joseph,” Arethusa said plaintively, “when I decided to love you, I had no idea you were so bloodthirsty. Do you realize we’ve never gone an entire day without you announcing your intention to murder someone?” “People who plant nuclear mines in major population centers?” I said. “You bet I’ll kill them if I get a chance.” “No allowances for good intentions?” “None,” I said firmly. “Even if I stipulate that a world of enforced peace run by something like Weathermen with nukes is a good intention—and I don’t—nobody elected these clowns to do the job. They don’t have the right. Even a tyrant rules by consent of his people, no matter how difficult he makes it for them to withhold it. He rules openly, a fair target for any assassin. But these vermin are worse than a well-poisoner.” She bit her lip. Then she shrugged. “You’re right,” she said, “but I want you to promise me that you’ll give up murdering people once we’re married.”
― Spider Robinson, Lady Slings the Booze

“Hey,” Arethusa said from my right, just past Sally. “What’s wrong with pacifists? Look at Buddhists: they’re nice people.” I gave her my best smile, and got a much better one in trade. Arethusa can smile like a long-distance kiss. I poured her two plastic cups of peach juice from the flask on my bedside table. Lady Sally started to adjust her chair so she could see us both… then left it as it was and spoke past me, to Arethusa’s other body, which opened its eyes politely. “They’re different,” Lady Sally conceded. “They’re honest pacifists. You don’t have to worry about them fighting dirty, because they never fight: they don’t have Jihads or Crusades. The strongest weapon they use is reason; the strongest protest they allow themselves is suicide, and they’re always careful not to let the flames spread. Pacifism of that sort is no more objectionable than belief in astrology or membership in the Flat Earth Society. I was speaking of the kind of pacifists we grew like hothouse flowers in this country fifteen or twenty years ago, and still have all too many of. Pacifist terrorists. The kind who want all wars everywhere to cease and everyone to live in peace… and are prepared to keep blowing up wealthier and less enlightened fellow citizens until that day comes. There’s nothing wrong with wanting wars to stop—but the moment a pacifist uses any weapon but calm speech, he’s a hypocrite. If he’s willing to kill, he’s a psychotic. The only good thing about them as opponents is that it isn’t murder to kill one.”
― Spider Robinson, Lady Slings the Booze

“And how do we know that?” I riposted. “Because they’ve screwed up so many of them! Secrecy they have plenty of. What they are crucially short of are competence and reliability. If a Soviet Premier were to order a nuclear mine built, he’d be delivered something the size of a Sherman tank, that worked one time out of four… and sure as God made little green horseflies, somebody on the very first penetration team would defect. That’s the problem they’ll never crack: if a man is intelligent enough to be worth sending abroad, they don’t dare let him out of the country.” “They build very good missiles,” she argued. “That suggests they can produce good technology if they want to badly enough.” “Says who? How often do they ever fire one at a target anyone else can monitor? I told you: esoteric weapons are one of my hobbies.” “Well, very good spaceships—that’s the same thing.” “They build shitty spaceships. Ever seen the inside of one? They look like something out of Flash Gordon, or the cab of a steam locomotive. Big knife-switches and levers and dials that’d look natural in a Nikola Tesla exhibit. No computers worth mentioning. After the Apollo-Soyuz linkup, our guys came back raving at the courage of anyone who would ride a piece of junk like that into space.” “The Soviet space program is much more substantial than America’s! It has been since long before Apollo.” “With shitty spaceships. It’s just that they don’t stop building them, the way this stupid country has. Did you ever hear the story about the first Soviet space station crew?” “Died on reentry, didn’t they? Something about an air leak?” “Leonov, the first man ever to walk in space, has been in the identical model reentry vehicle many times. He’s been quoted assaying that the crew of that mission had to have heard the air whistling out, and that any of the three of them could easily have reached out and plugged the leak with a finger. They died of a combination of bad technology and lousy education. You wait and see: if the Soviets ever open the books and let us compare duds and destructs, you’ll find out they had a failure rate much higher than ours. You know those rockets they’ve got now, that everybody admires so much, the ‘big dumb boosters’? They could have beat us to the Moon with those. But of the first eight to leave the launch pad, the most successful survived for seventeen seconds. So they used a different booster for the Moon project, and it didn’t make the nut.”
― Spider Robinson, Lady Slings the Booze

“This game’s over, man! You gotta move your Boss or Rocky’s gonna lay a subpoenie on him; then his Torpedo is gonna smoke your Old Lady, and all your Heavies’ll be doin’ time—except for maybe your Mouthpiece, but Rocky’s Sheriff got him put in the corner—you got nothin’ left but Punks and Junkies: you’re through, Jimmy.” —Angel Martin to Jim Rockford, commenting on a chess game, in the Rockford Files episode “Chicken Little Is a Little Chicken,” by Stephen J. Cannell”
― Spider Robinson, Lady Slings the Booze

“Sure, you could knock down the World Trade Center. But that only impresses the people who live in sight of the World Trade Center.”
― Spider Robinson, Lady Slings the Booze

“Get it right, you’re a star. Get it half-right, you’re a gas giant.”
― Spider Robinson, Lady Slings the Booze