Vonda N. McIntyre > Quotes

“They said everything outside killed, so I thought nothing did.”
― Vonda N. McIntyre, Dreamsnake

“Theories aren’t the same when you actually have to start using them.”
― Vonda N. McIntyre, Dreamsnake

“Pick something else".
For an instant's flash Kylis remembered being taunted like this before, when she was very small. Anything but that. Anything but what you really want.”
― Vonda M. McIntyre

“The patterns the whales used for communication, the three-dimensional shapes, as transparent to sound as solid objects, could express any concept. Any concept except, perhaps, vacuum, infinity, nothingness so complete it would never become anything. The nearest way she could try to describe it was with silence.”
― Vonda N. McIntyre, Superluminal

“How can I tell her to be glad she's alive, when she knows she'll never walk on the desert again, or find me a diamond for some patron's earring, never gentle another horse, never make love?"
"I don't know," Smoke said. "But if you and Alex see her life as a tragedy, that's what it will be.”
― Vonda N. McIntyre, Dreamsnake

“Good lord! Didn’t you trust anyone else to make the observations?”
― Vonda N. McIntyre, The Entropy Effect

“The theories of Tipler”
― Vonda N. McIntyre, The Entropy Effect

“My mother had a consulting job on Hafjian,” Sulu said. “We had an antigrav generator just big enough for our living quarters, but when we went out we used Leiber exoskeletons.” Just the name brought back memories of how it felt to wear the harness for hours and sometimes days on end. The alloy frame helped support and propel the unadapted human body in high gravity. The exoskeleton served its purpose, but at the points of highest stress it always caused abrasion. And of course it did not prevent gravity from affecting the circulatory system.”
― Vonda N. McIntyre, Star Trek Enterprise: The First Adventure

“...if he lost consciousness still telling me to do nothing, I'd have to let him die. You say yourself he's rational. I have no right to go against his desires. No matter how stupid and wasteful they are.”
― Vonda N. McIntyre, Dreamsnake

“The curtains were open to darkness. Arevin had not moved since returning from the observation point, where he had looked down upon the eastern desert and the rolling masses of storm clouds. The killing winds turned sharp-edged sand grains into lethal weapons. In the storm, heavy clothing would not protect Arevin, nor would any amount of courage or desperation. A few moments in the desert would kill him; an hour would strip his bones bare. In the spring no trace of him would be left.”
― Vonda N. McIntyre, Dreamsnake

“A few paces away, Spock paused. He looked up into the deep sky. "I have been …" he said. At his strained and tortured voice, Jim moved instinctively toward him. " … and always shall be … your friend. . . ." "Yes," Jim whispered. "Yes, Spock." Spock half turned. "The ship," he said. "Out of danger …?" "You saved the ship, Spock. You saved us all! Don't you remember?" Spock said nothing for a moment. He cocked his head, as if listening to some far-away inner voice. He arched his eyebrow and slowly faced Jim Kirk. "Jim," he said softly. "Your name is Jim." "Yes!" Jim's voice broke, and he caught his breath. Spock nodded once, briefly, as if acknowledging to himself that he had found the proper path. He glanced at McCoy, and then at the others.”
― Vonda N. McIntyre, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock: Movie Tie-In Novelization

“Saavik gazed calmly at the viewscreen. She was aesthetically elegant in the spare, understated, esoterically powerful manner of a Japanese brush-painting.”
― Vonda N. McIntyre, The Wrath Of Khan

“The drive to convert people's minds and hearts has caused more grief, more suffering, more loss of life than any desire for property, riches, or even the necessities of survival.”
― Vonda N. McIntyre, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock: Movie Tie-In Novelization

“She knew that nothing she could imagine could approach the strangeness of the expidition's first contact with non-Terrestrial beings. She could not predict what would happen. It was the sense of immersing herself in strangeness that she sought, knowing she would have to meet the reality with equanimity, and wing it from there.”
― Vonda N. McIntyre, Starfarers

“in the vicinity of a singularity, the only thing one can predict is that events will occur that one could not predict.”
― Vonda N. McIntyre, The Entropy Effect

“Her people, like all the other people on earth, were too self-centered, too introspective. Perhaps that was inevitable, for their isolation was well enforced. But as a result the healers has been too shortsighted; by protecting the dreamsnakes, they had kept them from maturing.”
― Vonda N. McIntyre, Dreamsnake

“Are you going to let a little thing like a rip through space-time slow you down?”
― Vonda N. McIntyre, The Crystal Star

“Good Lord, don’t tell her I said that.”
― Vonda N. McIntyre, The Entropy Effect

“And then Snake saw the craters, stretching away across the desert below her. The earth was covered with green circular basins. Some, lying in the path of the lava flow, had caught and broken its smooth frozen billows. Others were clearer, great holes gouged in the earth, still distinct after so many years of driving sands. The craters were so large, spread over such a distance, that they could only have one source. Nuclear explosions had blasted them. The war was long over, almost forgotten, for it had destroyed everyone who knew or cared about the reason it had happened.”
― Vonda N. McIntyre, Dreamsnake

“come up behind me without warning. Do you understand? I react by reflex and I might hurt you.”
― Vonda N. McIntyre, The Entropy Effect

“Spock thanked him, and Braithewaite left, reading one of the transcripts as he walked.”
― Vonda N. McIntyre, The Entropy Effect

“This will be a milk run.”
― Vonda N. McIntyre, The Entropy Effect

“Aleph Prime’s sun had grown large enough to appear in the viewscreen”
― Vonda N. McIntyre, The Entropy Effect

“We must all do our best to report accurately what occurred”
― Vonda N. McIntyre, The Entropy Effect

“From outside, the Enterprise would have fallen toward the deranged metric, growing fainter and fuzzier, till it vanished.”
― Vonda N. McIntyre, The Entropy Effect

“Ian Braithewaite entered the engine room of the Enterprise.”
― Vonda N. McIntyre, The Entropy Effect

“Babel-17,”
― Vonda N. McIntyre, The Entropy Effect

“Vulcan. A desert world, limited in material resources, yet limitless in the intellectual and philosophical achievements of its inhabitants.”
― Vonda N. McIntyre, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock: Movie Tie-In Novelization