Great Sky River Quotes

“His ass knows more words than his mouth does.”
― Gregory Benford, Great Sky River

“wondrous”
― Gregory Benford, Great Sky River

“Death’s sure and steady measure was not pure evil. It brought an intense poignant richness to every moment. To mortal men each day came once and forever and struck sure into the heart. The machines would never know that. They lived in a kind of still gray death, where no one moment meant anything, because all moments were alike. Only the dreaming vertebrates knew that life held more than that.”
― Gregory Benford, Great Sky River

“Speaking, he had felt for the first time what it was to drive forth into the unforgiving air your own self, projected through the weblike sensorium but riding finally on the resonant tones of pure voice. Words were blunt, blind things to use in aid of the clear way he himself saw the world. He wrestled with them like strange tools, forcing their soft meanings to drive hard facts into the minds of the others. Words not only meant things, they made the mind feel and stretch, the blood pound faster.”
― Gregory Benford, Great Sky River

“Crafter was just stayin’ alive.” It did so in a manner against our precepts. That is the crucial distinction. (Unintelligible.) I discovered the Crafter some time ago and did not report it because I knew I could use it for higher purposes. That is the only moral reason to suffer such an aberrant mind. It wished to retain all its memories, personality, everything. That is not possible when an individual mind is subsumed into the mechmind. (Unintelligible.) A portion of the individual experience propagates, yes. A sense of selfness, yes. But not the whole. That would require storage space and complication without end.”
― Gregory Benford, Great Sky River

“Killeen had potted a Snout that carried edible foods for its organic parts. They had both stuffed themselves with the greasy goo.”
― Gregory Benford, Great Sky River

“Without thinking he held his hands open in front of his chest.”
― Gregory Benford, Great Sky River

“Your wife, she like a doorknob, ever’body gets a turn.”
― Gregory Benford, Great Sky River