Joan D. Vinge > Quotes

“But what force in the galaxy is stronger than she is?"

"Indifference." Jerusha surprised herself with the answer. "Indifference, Gundhalinu, is the strongest force in the universe. It makes everything it touches meaningless. Love and hate don't stand a chance against it. It lets neglect and decay and monstrous injustice go unchecked. It doesn't act, it allows. And that's what gives it so much power.”
― Joan D. Vinge, The Snow Queen

“Real power is control. Knowing that you can do anything...and not doing it only because you can.”
― Joan D. Vinge, The Snow Queen

“Don't worry. You're safe now. You've got nothing left to steal.”
― Joan D. Vinge, Catspaw

“In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is stoned to death.”
― Joan D. Vinge

“There are two tragedies in life. One is never getting your heart's desire. The other is getting it.”
― Joan D. Vinge, The Summer Queen

“Indifference is the strongest force in the universe. It makes everything it touches meaningless. Love and hate don't stand a chance against it.”
― Joan D. Vinge, The Snow Queen

“To be alive was to be disappointed. You tried and failed and kept on trying, never knowing whether you'd ever get what you wanted. But sometimes we get what we need.”
― Joan D. Vinge, Psion

“It doesn't matter. I'm not asking forever of you...just let me love you now.”
― Joan D. Vinge, The Snow Queen

“Learn to be - gentle with them. Learn that... that gentleness isn't... weakness.”
― Joan D. Vinge, The Snow Queen

“Life scars us with its random motion, he thought. Only death is perfect.”
― Joan D. Vinge, The Summer Queen

“Everything changes, today's tears are tomorrow's absurdities, after all.”
― Joan D. Vinge, The Summer Queen

“Archaeology is the anthropology of the past, and science fiction is the anthropology of the future.”
― Joan D. Vinge

“I am only a cup that knowledge holds. It does not to knowledge matter how poor the cup is. It is the wisdom of those who drink of me that me wise makes. Fools make a sibyl foolish, wherever she is.”
― Joan D. Vinge, The Snow Queen

“I stood where they'd left me. I watched them get smaller and smaller as they went down the hallway, leaving me there without a word, not even looking back. Only I was getting smaller and smaller, being swallowed up in the suffocating emptiness of the silent house; so that by the time they came back again, I would have disappeared.”
― Joan D. Vinge, Catspaw

“Most people simply aren’t unhappy enough with the known to trade it for the unknown”
― Joan D. Vinge, The Snow Queen

“Maybe everything we do is meaningless. But we have to try, don't we? We have to go on looking for justice... and settling for revenge.”
― Joan D. Vinge, The Snow Queen

“Yes, she made me love her. But she didn't mean to. She took by giving... and that makes all the difference.”
― Joan D. Vinge, The Snow Queen

“All medical men are voyeurs. Why else would they become doctors? Except for the sadists, of course, who simply enjoy the blood and the pain.”
― Joan D. Vinge, The Snow Queen

“My gods or your gods, who know which are stronger?' That's why we honor them all - just in case. There are more cultures even than Gods in the Eight Worlds, and among them you'll find people who are willing to kill you, or each other, over any difference in belief or lifestyle or physical appearance you can imagine - and some you can't. They all think they're right. There's no Truth, Tammis, only differences of opinion.”
― Joan D. Vinge, The Summer Queen

“Laws were made by men, and men made mistakes.”
― Joan D. Vinge, 47 Ronin

“[S]omehow, without his being aware of it, time had coated his awe with a rind of disillusionment, and the wine of wonder had turned to vinegar.”
― Joan D. Vinge, The Snow Queen

“I love you,' he whispered again, wonderingly, as he understood at last how a lifetime together with someone that you loved could seem like an eternity, and yet not be long enough.”
― Joan D. Vinge, The Summer Queen

“How time slips past, masked in the rhythm of the days!”
― Joan D. Vinge, The Snow Queen

“- Ezer világon és tízezer életen át is kereslek majd, amíg meg nem talállak.
- Én pedig várok majd rá, minden világban és minden életben...”
― Joan D. Vinge, 47 Ronin

“You've made her so beautiful; when she's come to take your life away.”
― Joan D. Vinge, The Snow Queen

“Indifference, Gundhalinu, is the strongest force in the universe. It makes everything it touches meaningless. Love and hate don’t stand a chance against it. It lets neglect and decay and monstrous injustice go unchecked. It doesn’t act, it allows. And that’s what gives it so much power.”
― Joan D. Vinge, The Snow Queen

“Nos, én azt vallom, hogy akár táncolunk, akár nem, bohócok vagyunk, úgyhogy ezzel az erővel akár táncolhatunk is.”
― Joan D. Vinge, 47 Ronin

“There were some things even the rules of an absolute human overlord had no right to deny, and one of them was justice”
― Joan D. Vinge, 47 Ronin

“Things change all the time; but how much of it is real? Does any choice any of us ever makes, no matter how important it seems, really cause a ripple in the greater scheme of things?”
― Joan D. Vinge, The Snow Queen

“Jule was a poet—poetry was like psi, she said, like thought, a thing that compressed images to essence.”
― Joan D. Vinge, Psion