John Varley > Quotes

“We all love after-the-bomb stories. If we didn't, why would there be so many of them? There's something attractive about all those people being gone, about wandering in a depopulated world, scrounging cans of Campbell's pork and beans, defending one's family from marauders. But some secret part of us thinks it would be good to survive. All those other folks will die. That's what after-the-bomb stories are all about.”
― John Varley

“When I started writing I wanted the best tools. I skipped right over chisels on rocks, stylus on wet clay plates, quills and fountain pens, even mechanical pencils, and went straight to one of the first popular spin-offs of the aerospace program: the ballpoint pen. They were developed for comber navigators in the war because fountain pens would squirt all over your leather bomber jacket at altitude. (I have a cherished example of the next generation ballpoint, a pressurized Space Pen cleverly designed to work in weightlessness, given to me by Spider Robinson. At least, I cherish it when I can find it. It is also cleverly designed to seek out the lowest point of your desk, roll off, then find the lowest point on the floor, under a heavy piece of furniture. That's because it is cylindrical and lacks a pocket clip to keep it from rolling. In space, I presume it would float out of your pocket and find a forgotten corner of your spacecraft to hide in. NASA spent $3 million developing it. Good job, guys. I'm sure it's around here somewhere.)”
― John Varley, The John Varley Reader

“The public had an endless appetite for stories like that. Subconsciously, I think they think the gods of luck will favor them when the tromp of doom starts to thump. As for survivor interviews, I find them very boring, but I'm apparently in the minority. At least half of them had this to say: "God was watching over me." Most of those people didn't even believe in a god. This is the deity-as-hit-man view of theology. What I always thought was, if God was looking out for you, he must have had a real hard-on for all those folks he belted into the etheric like so many rubbery javelins.”
― John Varley, Steel Beach

“How heavy is that day in the mountains when you built a campfire and saw a shooting star? What is the mass of yesterday? How fast is love?”
― John Varley, Demon

“Cirocco liked space, reading, and sex, not necessarily in that order. She had never been able to satisfactorily combine all three, but two was not bad.”
― John Varley, Titan

“But I don’t believe in heroes anymore. I just believe in people coping with their lives as best they can. You do what you have to do, and in some ways you have no more choice about it than a rock has about falling from a high place.”
― John Varley, Wizard

“If it’s not worth making beautiful,” Valiha said, “it’s not worth making.”
― John Varley, Wizard

“A toast! To the road! May it lead to adventure and carry us safely back home.”
― John Varley, Wizard

“Will have been! A truly stratospheric verb.”
― John Varley, Demon

“He couldn't think of a good place. At first he thought she hated all living beings equally. Lately he had come to believe he held a special place in her heart, just below rattlesnakes, pederasts, and spirochetes. Definitely a tough place to start from, but determination had always been Conal's strong point.”
― John Varley, Demon

“The English language was a delight to them, so illogical and fertile and well-suited to their natural desire to confuse, obfuscate, and generally side-step clear meaning whenever possible.”
― John Varley, Demon

“Ain’t got no strawberries,” the bartender said. “Then go out and kill some!”
― John Varley, Steel Beach

“All in all, it was the goldarndest, Barnum-and-Baileyest, rib-stickinest, rough-and-tumblest infernal foofaraw of a media circus anybody had seen since grandpaw chased the possum down the road and lost his store teeth, and I was heartily sorry to have been a part of it.”
― John Varley

“I wasn’t around, and I guess if I had been, I would have been part of the oppressor class and think it was the way things should be. But I have been told that things are a lot better now. I won’t say they’re perfect. Things don’t get perfect. But most of the women I know are happy. They don’t think there’s many battles left to fight.” “You’d better stop there,” Robin cautioned. “Most women have always been happy with the way things were, or at least they said so. That goes back to before peckish society allowed women to vote. Just because we of the Coven believe some things that I now know are overstated or incorrect, don’t draw the conclusion that we are foolish about everything. We know that the majority is always willing to let things remain as they are until they are led to something better. A slave may not be happy with her lot, but most do nothing to improve it. Most do not believe it can be improved.”
― John Varley, Wizard

“If she must face the fact that she was fearful, she would also face the fear and overcome it.”
― John Varley, Wizard

“Looking around me, I saw that all my colleagues were busy at the same task. Eyes were rolled up, mouths hung open, here and there a finger twitched. It had to be either a day trip from the Catatonic Academy, or the modern press at work.”
― John Varley, Steel Beach

“She grew into a quiet, beautiful young woman. The beauty was a nuisance, like smog and poverty.”
― John Varley, Wizard

“She knew for a fact, for instance, that what the Polo sisters did behind the closed doors of their adjoining rooms was still illegal in Alabama.”
― John Varley, Titan

“There were millions of Earth men and women who bought the Earth cultures big lies, and they died just as unhappy as you are now. And I suggest to you that it's a foolish thing.”
― John Varley, Demon

“Bill’s tongue had started at Cirocco’s toes and was now exploring her left ear. She liked that. It had been a memorable journey.”
― John Varley, Titan

“Yes, but what is it good for? What does it mean?” Her look was full of pity. “If you have to ask that question, you wouldn’t understand the answer.”
― John Varley, Wizard

“Draw your own moral from this, Sparky. And remember at the center of the cult of personality called stardom there is just a big empty hole. Awards don't matter. Acclaim doesn't matter. Only your craft matters.”
― John Varley

“They eat the sewage that floats on the surface of the mass culture, digest it, and then get creative diarrhea--all at once. The turd look and smell exactly alike, and we call them this year's fashions, hit shows, books, and movies.”
― John Varley, Blue Champagne

“There is a certain concentrated, avid-for-blood look that appears on the faces of reporters on the trail of a very big story that you'd have to visit the big cat house at the zoo to see duplicated in its primal state. From the look on Brenda's face, if a tiger was standing between her and this story right now, the cat would soon have a tall-journalist-sized hole in him.”
― John Varley, Steel Beach

“New York in the ‘80s is not a bad place. If you can’t make there, you can’t make it anywhere.”
― John Varley, Millennium

“Gas chamber, gallows. Electric chair, stake, firing squad. Hang by the neck till you’re dead, dead, dead, and may God recycle your soul.”
― John Varley, The Ophiuchi Hotline

“It could very well be that if a grandfather paradox really gets going and history from the point of the twonky forward starts to come unglued...
...we all softly and suddenly vanish away.
Not just you and me, but the Sun, Jupiter, Alpha Centauri and the Andromeda Galaxy.
And so forth.
This is known as the Cosmic Disgust Theory. Or: "If you’re going to play games like that, I’ll take my marbles and go home. Signed, God.”
― John Varley, Millennium

“We both had to reject the concept of life after death, even if we weren’t brought up to believe in it, because all human cultures are steeped in the idea.”
― John Varley, Wizard

“How are you, Hildy? Having a good time? Getting laid?” “Just did, thank you.”
― John Varley, Steel Beach

“I had thought Chicago was inevitable, like diarrhea.”
― John Varley, The Persistence of Vision