You do what you have to do to give people closure; it makes them feel better and it doesn’t cost you much to do it. I’d rather apologize for something I didn’t really care about, and leave someone on Earth wishing me well, than to be stubborn and have that someone hoping that some alien would slurp out my brains. Call it karmic insurance.
I despise you and I love you, you who are my damnation and salvation both.
The good news is I peed before going to sleep.
There has never been a military in the entire history of the human race that has gone to war equipped with more than the least that it needs to fight its enemy. War is expensive. It costs money and it costs lives and no civilization has an infinite amount of either. So when you fight, you conserve. You use and equip only as much as you have to, never more.
It’s hard to sell the official story to people who can see things for themselves.
The universe is a big place. Maybe we’re not in the best neighborhood.
Rich people show their appreciation through favors. When everyone you know has more money than they know what to do with, money stops being a useful transactional tool. So instead you offer favors. Deals. Quid pro quos. Things that involve personal involvement rather than money. Because when you’re that rich, your personal time is your limiting factor.
You threw him into space?” “Yup.” “And he didn’t die?” “We only threw him out a little bit.” Marce.
I’m continually confronted with the human tendency to ignore or deny facts until the last possible instant. And then for several days after that, too.” Attavio.
Captain, the problem is not that I’m paranoid. The problem is that the universe keeps justifying my paranoia.
Confidence isn’t about knowing you’re right. Confidence is about knowing you can make it right.
Part of what makes us human is what we mean to other people, and what people mean to us. I miss meaning something to someone, having that part of being human.
She was my friend. Briefly, she was my lover. She was braver than I ever would have been in the moment of death. And I bet she was a hell of a shooting star.
If you’re the best that the Earth has got to offer, it’s time we bend over and get a tentacle right up the ass.
I have always found that there’s an inverse relationship between the number of people in a room and the amount of useful work that can be done.
Q’eeng had just attempted in the third dialect the traditional rightward schism greeting of “I offer you the bread of life,” but his phrasing and accent had transmuted the statement into “Let us violate cakes together.
Ensign Davis thought, Screw this, I want to live, and swerved to avoid the land worms. But then he tripped and one of the land worms ate his face and he died anyway.
Well, I miss my wife, you know,” I said. “But I also miss the feeling of, I don’t know, comfort. The sense you’re where you’re supposed to be, with someone you’re supposed to be with.
A church is an institution separate from the religion it serves. It’s filled with people. And you know how people are.
I propose a toast. Here’s to being right all the time. May God and history forgive us.” They all clinked glasses to that.