Humans,” said the puppeteer, “should not be allowed to run loose. You will surely harm yourselves.
To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection.
On a world built to ordered specification, there was no logical reason for such a mountain to exist. Yet every world should have at least one unclimbable mountain.
Dune; Nova; Double Star; The Corridors of Time; Cat’s Cradle; Half Past Human; Murder in Retrospect; Gideon’s Day; The Red Right Hand; The Trojan Hearse; A Deadly Shade of Gold; Conjure Wife; Rosemary’s Baby; Silverlock; King Conan. He’d packed books not to entertain, nor even to illustrate philosophies of life, but to rebuild civilization.
This place is a playground for a questing mind.
The State has a superfluity of testicles, Peersa said with no particular emphasis.
He felt brittle, and ravenous.
You probably used fusion bombs against the Girls.
Gradually he was learning the size, the scale of the Ringworld. It was unpleasant, like all learning processes. He.
We play your part in order to understand you, but you each seem to play a thousand parts. It makes things difficult for an honest, hard-working bug-eyed monster.
We’re in the hands of infinite power and infinite sadism.
The Devil he blew an outward breath, for his heart was free from care.
Remember the Finagle Laws. The perversity of the universe tends toward a maximum. The universe is hostile.” “But.
And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Matthew 7:3.
Nessus sprawled bonelessly in his couch. He looked ridiculously, ludicrously comfortable.
They do not use lasers, they do not use radio, they do not use hyperwave. What are they using for communication? Telepathy? Written messages? Big mirrors?” “Parrots,” Louis suggested. He got up to join them at the door to the control room. “Huge parrots, specially bred for their oversized lungs. They’re too big to fly. They just sit on hilltops and scream at each other.
The air smelled of ozone and puppeteers.
God was knocking, and he wanted in bad.
Did I still remember how to let my mind play?
One must travel all the way to the center. To know and hate evil is one path to knowing good.