Ian McDonald

Any AI smart enough to pass a Turing test is smart enough to know to fail it.

Fake it may be, lies and deceptions, but this is the world in which we find ourselves, and here we must make our little lives.

There's never been a rule of human behavior that hasn't been broken by someone, somewhere, sometime, in some circumstance mundane or spectacular. To be human is to transcend the rules.

He's never fought with religion; what is the point of railing against such beauty, such intimate theatre, such chime of eternity? He can treasure it without believing in it.

Nothing tells you that you are not on Earth anymore than exhaling at one price and inhaling at another.

Mr. Durukan, if God is dead then everything is conspiracy.

We were young and thought we were invincible and we threw ourselves into the gears of history and it ground us up.

Catherynne M. Valente

She sounds like someone who spends a lot of time in libraries, which are the best sorts of people.

You will always fall in love, and it will always be like having your throat cut, just that fast.

You are going to break your promise. I understand. And I hold my hands over the ears of my heart, so that I will not hate you.

It is well known that reading quickens the growth of a heart like nothing else.

Never put your faith in a Prince. When you require a miracle, trust in a Witch.

 book is a door, you know. Always and forever. A book is a door into another place and another heart and another world.

That's how you get deathless, volchitsa. Walk the same tale over and over, until you wear a groove in the world, until even if you vanished, the tale would keep turning, keep playing, like a phonograph, and you'd have to get up again, even with a bullet through your eye, to play your part and say your lines.

Carolyn Ives Gilman

To die this way seems so random, so trivial. I have been robbed of meaning before being robbed of life. To die in darkness, alone -- for what purpose was I ever alive. It is as if I emerged from darkness into delusion, then sank back into darkness forever.

Powerlessness is such a lure, such a poisonous lure.

I'm perfectly natural the way I am. Why can't you humans ever understand that I might not want to be afflicted with gender?

I didn’t know it then, but I could never turn back once I had learned this. To see something you must cease to be it.

What kind of word is ‘methodal’?” David asked. “A buzzword,” Ashok answered, this time himself. “Methodal. Sounds like a drug.” “That’s what buzzwords are. Tranquilizers.” “Thought suppressants, you mean."

I may not know what my heart truly holds, but who does? I think we're all mysteries, even to ourselves.

Mary Robinette Kowal

One must not put trust in novelists, Beth; they create worlds to fit their own needs and drive their characters mad in doing it.

It's not about adding diversity for the sake of diversity, it's about subtracting homogeneity for the sake of realism.

Perfection is different to every viewer.

It’s a hard thing to look at something you want and to know that the right choice is to turn it down.

I would rather have you honestly angry with me than polite.

If you don't know by now, you own me, heart, mind, body, and soul.

She sighed to cover her agitation. “You are insufferable.” “I prefer ‘inscrutable.’” He smiled, softening a little at her teasing tone, and because she had allowed the change of topic. “Inexplicable would be more accurate.” “Inconceivable!” She rested her hand on her ever-increasing stomach. “Not any longer.” He laughed and kissed her on the forehead. “I do not think that word means what you think it means.” “Humph!” But Jane was delighted that she had managed to make him laugh.

China Miéville

A trap is only a trap if you don't know about it. If you know about it, it's a challenge.

Books are always obviously having conversations with other books, and some times they're amiable and sometimes not.

Word spread because word will spread. Stories and secrets fight, stories win, shed new secrets, which new stories fight, and on.

Scars are not injuries, Tanner Sack. A scar is a healing. After injury, a scar is what makes you whole.

Loads of children read books about dinosaurs, underwater monsters, dragons, witches, aliens, and robots. Essentially, the people who read SF, fantasy and horror haven't grown out of enjoying the strange and weird.

Part of the appeal of the fantastic is taking ridiculous ideas very seriously and pretending they're not absurd.

Dismissing fantasy writing because some of it is bad is exactly like saying I'm not reading Jane Eyre because it is a romance and I know romance is crap.

My dad hates umbrellas, said Deeba, swinging her own. When it rains he always says the same thing. 'I do not believe the presence of moisture in the air is sufficient reason to overturn society's usual sensible taboo against wielding spiked clubs at eye level.

The dead are way more organized than the living.

Jay Lake

Writing is self-reinforcing. Don't make a fetish out of it, and don't surrender to the myth of the garret, or the myth of the chained muse. It's like playing the guitar, or practicing taekwondo, or having sex. The more you do, the better you get. The better you get, the better it feels. The better it feels, the more you want to do.

Do not teach your congregation to pray. Someday they might succeed.

Some people would rather that you die for their beliefs than that they re-examine those beliefs.

Ever has common decency paved the way to uncommon folly.

I wished I’d thought of that last before I’d departed. It might have been good advice to give out in my final days in Copper Downs, had I been able to fit such a conversation in between my busy schedule of murder, arson, and funerary rites.

Pregnancy, childbirth, healing and old age all required gee force. No amount of gengineering by the Biomistresses of the great stations could circumvent that inescapable evolutionary fact.

Saladin Ahmed

One can only know as much as one has lived to know, though it is certainly possible to learn a great deal less than this.

When one faces two ghuls, waste no time wishing for fewer.

I have served Almighty God as best as I can. I have failed at times, but "Perfection is the palace in which God alone lives."

Ahhh, God's balls! The Horrible Halt! Adoulla pronounced the Dhamsawaati term for the complete standstill of traffic with a familiar disgust.

No, it wasn’t nothing Christian. But my momma taught me that another man’s religion was like another man’s wife—none of my goddamn business. That

Simple things ought not to be taken for granted.

Making each other’s tea was half the reason they had such a happy marriage.

Ellen Klages

She still had all of her marbles, though every one of them was a bit odd and rolled asymmetrically.

Music is the hidden arithmetic of the soul, which does not know that it deals with numbers. 

At least once a week, Dinsy was amused by the indignant sputtering of someone who had just spooned dill weed, not sugar, into a cup of Earl Grey tea.

She thought for a minute about going back, but decided that maybe being wet on a sort-of adventure was better than being dry and bored for sure.

Time has become quiet flexible inside the library. This is true of most places with interesting books. Sit down to read for twenty minutes, and suddenly it's dark, with no clue as to where the hours have gone.

Librarians are guardians of books. They guide others along their paths, offering keys to help unlock the doors of knowledge.

We told them I was home-schooled, raised by feral librarians.

Dan Wells

Happiness is the most natural thing in the world when you have it, and the slowest, strangest, most impossible thing when you don't. It's like learning a foreign language: You can think about the words all you want, but you'll never be able to speak it until you suck up your courage and say them out loud.

I am stronger than my trials.

Life comes from death, and weakness teaches us strength.

Well, thanks for not shooting anyone, I guess", said Marcus. "My contribution was to somehow refrain from peeing myself. You can thank me later.

Fear is a ... it's a weird thing, when you think about it. People are only afraid of other things, they're never afraid of themselves.

If you can't know the truth, said Isolde, live the most awesome lie you can think off.

It's a pretty big shock to realise that the only people you can identify with are psychopathic killers.

I'm a good person, I said, because I know what good people are supposed to act like, and I copy them.

Larry Correia

I blame it on Twilight. In real life, vampires only sparkle when they're on fire.

Nikolai's a badass Russian. Badass Russians only have three emotions: revenge, depression, and vodka.

Fish and Wildlife wants to fine us for killing a giant mutant Tennessee River catfish because it was endangered. Sure it had just crawled up on land and eaten some teenagers, but it was still an endangered species.

There are three kinds of people in the world: people who can't believe anything, suckers who believe everything, and a few of us who can face the truth.

When all else fails, kill it with fire.

Their patch was a molecule with fangs under the words exite! chemicus sum! Which was Latin for, Back off, man! I'm a scientist!

You look into the abyss and the abyss looks back, I said, shrugging. Then you punch the abyss in the face.

I think that the law isn’t about words on paper. It’s about doing what’s right.