Elizabeth Bear > Quotes

“The secret to getting away with lying, is believing with all your heart. That goes for lying to yourself even more so than lying to another”
― Elizabeth Bear

“You know," he said, "every time a vampire says he doesn't believe in lycanthropes, a werewolf bursts into flames.”
― Elizabeth Bear, New Amsterdam

“Every one of us is a minor tragedy. Most of us learn to cope.”
― Elizabeth Bear, Whiskey and Water

“Some would say a whore don't have no expectation of Heaven. I'd say, if she gives value for cash, she's got a better shot at God's blessing than your average banker. Jesus loved Mary Magdalene. He kicked over tables when He met a moneylender.”
― Elizabeth Bear, Karen Memory

“Like the minor poet who knows the meanness of his gift, I am doomed to a lifetime of frustration: to be able to comprehend beauty, but not create it.”
― Elizabeth Bear, The Chains That You Refuse

“If you could disagree with kings, were gods so far above?”
― Elizabeth Bear, Range of Ghosts

“Opinions are like kittens," he commented. "People are always giving them away.”
― Elizabeth Bear, Ad Eternum

“The end of the world was supposed to be gradual. There was supposed to be warning. A long, slow slide. What we got was punctuated equilibrium: a stately wobbling, then a sudden tipping point. There was plenty of warning, I suppose. We just weren’t paying attention.”
― Elizabeth Bear

“The Devil can quote scripture, after all. And monsters can say "please" and "thank you" same as any mother's son.”
― Elizabeth Bear, Karen Memory

“She said, "You're a warrior. So how do you kill without rage?"
"In compassion. Because of necessity." Hrahima set the empty water bowl back in Samarkar's hands. "The same way you carry water.”
― Elizabeth Bear, Range of Ghosts

“My love is not water in a bucket, you know. It's not as if someone else can drink it all up and leave none left for you.”
― Elizabeth Bear, All the Windwracked Stars

“What was a book? Not just ink and fiber and stitchery: a series of processes. To a wizard, it was not a static object--but a human thought caught and bound, made concrete through sacred technology. Magic, then, and a deep form of it.”
― Elizabeth Bear, Shattered Pillars

“One of the interesting things about programming people of all sorts to be more ethical is that it also makes them more ethical about the limits of programming people to be ethical.”
― Elizabeth Bear, Ancestral Night

“There’s value in work you enjoy, or that serves a need. There’s no value in work for its own sake.”
― Elizabeth Bear, Ancestral Night

“Anyway, one of the first things you learn in space is not to thrash. If you have nothing constructive to do, the most constructive thing you can do is often nothing at all. In a mindful sense, I mean. Thrashing is the thing that gets people killed. Not sitting still.”
― Elizabeth Bear, Ancestral Night

“No one is making me say this. No one is making me tell this story. Nobody’s ever been much good at making me say anything I hadn’t already made up my mind to say.”
― Elizabeth Bear

“...one must come to the understanding in the end that one was always insufficiently practiced, and yet one must sometimes act anyway. Practice itself was an act.”
― Elizabeth Bear, Range of Ghosts

“The older he got, the simpler the world was revealed to be.”
― Elizabeth Bear, Seven for a Secret

“The words were low, more shape than breath.”
― Elizabeth Bear, New Amsterdam

“I don’t want what you want,” I said. “And I’m not going to help you. I don’t even want to argue with you, because while I know that human beings are capable of assimilating, adopting, internalizing, integrating, and identifying with new sets of ideas—because we have, multiple times in the history of the species—I’ve discovered that I don’t actually care what you think, because you are an awful person and you want awful things.”
― Elizabeth Bear, Ancestral Night

“Eavesdropping's a sin, but ignorance is fatal. Take your pick.”
― Elizabeth Bear, Karen Memory

“Spooky,” I whispered under my breath, and wondered if the last thing I ever said was going to be a not-very-funny physics joke.”
― Elizabeth Bear, Ancestral Night

“while humans traditionally divided themselves up into lovers and fighters, I considered myself living evidence that that was a false binary, having no skill with either set of tools. I belonged to a third group, equally useful: I was an engineer.”
― Elizabeth Bear, Ancestral Night

“Conspiracy theories are really attractive. Figuring out patterns is one of the things that gets your brain to give you a nice dose of chemical reward, the little ping of dopamine and whatever else that keeps you smiling. As a result, your brain is pretty good at finding patterns, and at disregarding information that doesn’t fit. Which means it’s also pretty good at finding false patterns, and at confirmation bias, and a bunch of other things that can be fatal. Our brains are also really good at making us the center of a narrative, because it’s what we evolved for.”
― Elizabeth Bear, Ancestral Night

“Rudeness is a weak person's imitation of strength.”
― Elizabeth Bear, Range of Ghosts

“Why didn’t you mention how you were feeling?” “Because it’s feelings,” I said. “And feelings are terrible.”
― Elizabeth Bear, Ancestral Night

“She was alive. She was alive, and she had found her power — or it had found her.
Tomorrow’s problems she’d take care of tomorrow.”
― Elizabeth Bear, Range of Ghosts

“Djinn,” she said. “We go to review the troops. Clothe me as befits a queen.”
“Silks and satins?” he asked, eyes sparkling like sapphires. “White brocade?”
“Armor,” she said. “And flame.”
― Elizabeth Bear, Shattered Pillars

“Her neural pattern must remain intact for the time being, as it was still necessary that she stay herself. Changes to her identity would eventually become inevitable, but those would have to wait until she no longer needed the cloak of who she was.”
― Elizabeth Bear, Chill

“For a brazen Libertine, an adulterer, a sodomite, an atheist, a fornicator, rakehell, heretic, godless playmaker and debaucher of innocents, you’re a sorry state of affairs.”
― Elizabeth Bear, Ink and Steel