The Best of Elizabeth Bear Quotes

“If you’re looking for a thief, bet on the man who’s always accusing his neighbors.”
― Elizabeth Bear, The Best of Elizabeth Bear

“Her eyes were for her happy monster.”
― Elizabeth Bear, The Best of Elizabeth Bear

“It’s amazing what you can learn to keep inside.”
― Elizabeth Bear, The Best of Elizabeth Bear

“There’s freedom in not being important”
― Elizabeth Bear, The Best of Elizabeth Bear

“With a pen in my hand, I find suddenly I am full of memories.”
― Elizabeth Bear, The Best of Elizabeth Bear

“I wrote it all down in hope, and when it didn’t work out, I burned it in despair.”
― Elizabeth Bear, The Best of Elizabeth Bear

“At least the pens and notebook are always solid.”
― Elizabeth Bear, The Best of Elizabeth Bear

“The self-sufficiency thing is your pathology, love, not mine.”
― Elizabeth Bear, The Best of Elizabeth Bear

“The rhythm of her feet soothed her when nothing else could.”
― Elizabeth Bear, The Best of Elizabeth Bear

“If status in the afterlife is determined by praises sung, yours is assured.”

“I wish you could hear how they talk about you. People hold you in awe.”
― Elizabeth Bear, The Best of Elizabeth Bear

“Sleep was sleep, and she wasn’t getting enough of it.”
― Elizabeth Bear, The Best of Elizabeth Bear

“Didn’t anyone tell you guys you’re supposed to be solitary predators?”
― Elizabeth Bear, The Best of Elizabeth Bear

“Survival was starting to seem like less of a pipe dream now.”
― Elizabeth Bear, The Best of Elizabeth Bear

“Panic gets you eaten.”
― Elizabeth Bear, The Best of Elizabeth Bear

“Dharthi knew better than anyone know much effort and dedication and scholarship went into Kraken’s work-but still, it sometimes seemed as if fantastic opportunities just fell into her lover’s lap without effort. And Kraken’s intellect and charisma were so dazzling…it was hard to see past that to the amount of study it took to support that seemingly effortless, comprehensive knowledge of just about everything.”
― Elizabeth Bear, The Best of Elizabeth Bear

“The trap of biology appalled her; she found it impossible to comprehend how people in the olden days had gotten anything done, with their painfully short lives and their limited access to resources, education, and technology”
― Elizabeth Bear, The Best of Elizabeth Bear

“Nearly everything on Venus was named after female persons-historical, literary, or mythological-from Terra, from the quaint old system of binary and exclusive genders.”
― Elizabeth Bear, The Best of Elizabeth Bear

“Even walking, observing, surviving, she had entirely too much time to think.”
― Elizabeth Bear, The Best of Elizabeth Bear

“She took great pride in her adaptation, in her ability to rough it. Some of the indigenous animals could be eaten, and Dharthi knew which ones. She also knew, more importantly, which ones were likely to eat her.”
― Elizabeth Bear, The Best of Elizabeth Bear

“It was ironically inevitable that Dharthi, named by her parents in a fit of homesickness for Terra, would grow up to be the most Cytherean of Cythereans.”
― Elizabeth Bear, The Best of Elizabeth Bear

“The idea of a little Kraken filled her up with mushy softness inside. But somebody’s career would go on hold for the first fifty solar days of that kid’s life, and Dharthi was pretty sure it wouldn’t be Kraken.”
― Elizabeth Bear, The Best of Elizabeth Bear

“If you get killed,” Kraken said, “make a note in your file that I can use your DNA. You’re not getting out of giving me children that easily.”
― Elizabeth Bear, The Best of Elizabeth Bear

“You know who else was always on about being laughed out of the Academy?” Kraken said. Her voice had that teasing tone that could break Dharthi’s worst, most self-loathing prickliest moods-if she let it. “Moriarty.”
― Elizabeth Bear, The Best of Elizabeth Bear

“Haring off across Ishtar alone, with no support-you’re not going to prove your theory about original Cytherean settlement patterns, Dhar. You’re going to get eaten by a grue.”
― Elizabeth Bear, The Best of Elizabeth Bear

“You look up from your work often enough to notice I’m missing?”
― Elizabeth Bear, The Best of Elizabeth Bear

“The University on Aphrodite,” Kraken said, “is five Quonset huts and a repurposed colonial landing module.”
― Elizabeth Bear, The Best of Elizabeth Bear

“What’s the ulterior motive this time?”
― Elizabeth Bear, The Best of Elizabeth Bear

“It was the third time in Dharthi’s one hundred solar days of life she had glimpsed the sun.”
― Elizabeth Bear, The Best of Elizabeth Bear

“She would look at this natural majesty, and try to spot the places where an unnaturally geometric line or angle showed in the topography of the canopy.”
― Elizabeth Bear, The Best of Elizabeth Bear

“Her adaptshell was beautifully tailored to this terrain, and that fur shed water like the hydrophobic miracle of engineering that it was.”
― Elizabeth Bear, The Best of Elizabeth Bear