Poul Anderson

A fanatic is a man who, when he's lost sight of his purpose, redoubles his effort.

Two lives met across death and centuries. To ask what it meant is meaningless. There is no destiny. But sometimes there is bravery.

You simply do not understand the human condition,” said the robot.

Hah! Do you think you do, you conceited hunk of animated tin?

That,' he confessed aloud, 'was as ludicrous a case of mutual ineptitude as the gods of slapstick ever engineered. We both deserve to be tickled to death by small green centipedes. Well... if you keep quiet about it, I will.

I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, which, when you looked at it in the right way, did not become still more complicated. 

Their flight was not less exhilarating for being explainable.

So much American science fiction is parochial -- not as true now as it was years ago, but the assumption is one culture in the future, more or less like ours, and with the same ideals, the same notions of how to do things, just bigger and flashier technology. Well, you know darn well it doesn't work that way...