Frank Schätzing > Quotes

“I'm a reasonable kind of guy. If I hear something that seems to make sense, I'm willing to give it the benefit of the doubt. If the alternative explanation has to be pounded into shape before it fits the mould of our experience, it seems to me that it's unlikely to be true.”
― Frank Schatzing, The Swarm

“Averages might mean something to bureaucrats and engineers, but the sea had no struck with statistics: it was a succession of unpredictable circumstances and extremes.”
― Frank Schätzing

“But I hope you’re not about to give me some kind of conspiracy theory. This is Norway, not America.”
― Frank Schätzing, The Swarm: A Novel

“Merkwürdige Rasse, die Menschheit. Flog zum Mond und schändete kleine Kinder.”
― Frank Schätzing, Limit

“Children in America drew six-legged chickens because drumsticks came in packs of six, while adults drank milk from a carton, and recoiled at the sight of an udder. Their experience of the world was stunted, but it only fuelled their arrogance.”
― Frank Schätzing, The Swarm: A Novel

“It was the mystery that biologists from Darwin onwards had been longing to solve. How could we understand the ability of fish and seals to survive in the cold dark waters of the Antarctic? How could humans see inside a biotope that was sealed with layers of ice? What would the Earth look like from the sky, if we crossed the Mediterranean on the back of a goose? How did it feel to be a bee? How could we measure the speed of an insect’s wings and its heartbeat, or monitor its blood pressure and eating patterns? What was the impact of human activities, like shipping noise or subsea explosions, on mammals in the depths? How could we follow animals to places where no human could venture?”
― Frank Schätzing, The Swarm: A Novel

“And yet most people would be lost without the idea that life increases in value the more it resembles our own.”
― Frank Schätzing, The Swarm: A Novel

“¿Qué puede pasar?» A veces uno tenía esos momentos. Demasiado metano e historias de monstruos. Por no hablar del clima. Tal vez tendría que haber desayunado mejor.”
― Frank Schätzing, El quinto día

“You know the classic lines you get in sci-fi? Whatever it is, it’s coming our way, or Get me the President on the line? Well, there’s always the one about the enemy being superior, though by the end of the story you mostly feel cheated. This time you won’t. The yrr are superior.”
― Frank Schätzing, The Swarm: A Novel

“We’re so obsessed with assuring our own perpetuity that our goals seldom coincide with what would be good for humankind”
― Frank Schätzing, The Swarm: A Novel

“Because it’s all about fear - fear of being alone, fear of never being asked and, worst of all, the fear of having a choice and making the wrong one.”
― Frank Schätzing, The Swarm: A Novel

“Gut gesprochen, gut gelernt, eilfertig herausgespien aus dem Fundus Eures Unverstands und unter konsequenter Umgehung des Nachdenkens.”
― Frank Schätzing, Tod und Teufel

“Ich dachte, die Minoriten seien nach dem Willen des barmherzigen Gottes arm und mittellos?"
"Ja, und darum gehört alles auf ihrem Grund und Boden einzig dem Herrn. Aber solang ders nicht abholt, muss es ja verwaltet werden."
"Oder gegessen?"
"Und getrunken.”
― Frank Schätzing, Tod und Teufel

“No, the Yrr haven’t changed the world. They’ve shown us how it really is.”
― Frank Schätzing, The Swarm

“Palm gestured vaguely. ‘I’d say it was an infection. According to Fenwick, that’s what did for Genghis too. But the weird thing is that there’s something inside those whales that doesn’t belong there.’ He pointed to his temples and traced a circle with his finger. ‘Fenwick found a clot in their brain stems. And some kind of leakage between the brain and the skull.’ Anawak sat up. ‘A blood clot? In both whales?’ ‘Not a blood clot, although at first we thought it was. Fenwick and Oliviera were pretty keen on the idea that noise was behind the change in the whales’ behaviour. They weren’t going to mention it till they’d found some proof, but for a while Fenwick was convinced it had something to do with the effects of that sonar system—’ ‘Surtass LFA?’ ‘That’s it.’ ‘No way.”
― Frank Schätzing, The Swarm: A Novel

“Our main problem over the past few days and weeks,’ he said, ‘has lain in trying to connect the various phenomena. In fact, there wasn’t any obvious connection until a jelly-like substance started to crop up. Sometimes it appeared in small quantities, sometimes in larger amounts, but always with the distinguishing characteristic that it disintegrated rapidly on contact with air. Unfortunately the discovery of the jelly only added to the mystery, given its presence in crustaceans, mussels and whales - three types of organism that could hardly be more different. Of course, it might have been some kind of fungus, a jellified version of rabies, an infectious disease like BSE or swine fever. But, if so, why would ships be disappearing or crabs transporting killer algae? There was no sign of the jelly on the worms that infested the slope. They were carrying a different kind of cargo - bacteria that break down hydrates and cause methane gas to rise. Hence the landslide and the tsunami. And what about the mutated species that have been emerging all over the world? Even fish have been behaving oddly. None of it adds up. In that respect, Jack Vanderbilt was right to discern an intelligent mind behind the chaos. But he overestimated our ability - no scientist knows anything like enough about marine ecology to be capable of manipulating it to that extent. People are fond of saying that we know more about space than we do about the oceans. It’s perfectly true, but there’s a simple reason why: we can’t see or move as well in the water as we can in outer space. The Hubble telescope peers effortlessly into different galaxies, but the world’s strongest floodlight only illuminates a dozen square metres of seabed. An astronaut in a spacesuit can move with almost total freedom, but even the most sophisticated divesuit won’t stop you being crushed to death beyond a certain depth. AUVs and ROVs are only operational if the conditions are right. We don’t have the physical constitution or the technology to deposit billions of worms on underwater hydrates, let alone the requisite knowledge to engineer them for a habitat that we barely understand. Besides, there are all the other phenomena: deep-sea cables being destroyed at the bottom of the ocean by forces other than the underwater slide; plagues of jellyfish and mussels rising from the abyssal plains. The simplest explanation would be to see these developments as part of a plan, but such a plan could only be the work of a species that knows the ocean as intimately as we do the land - a species that lives in the depths and plays the dominant role in that particular universe.”
― Frank Schätzing, The Swarm: A Novel

“Du kannst mich nicht vertreiben, nicht verbrennen und nicht ertränken. Dein Hass reicht nicht aus, mich zu besiegen, er macht mich nur stärker.”
― Frank Schätzing, Tod und Teufel

“Ya se sabía que los meteoritos, los terremotos, las erupciones volcánicas y los maremotos habían transformado la imagen de la Tierra durante millones de años, pero se diría que por un acuerdo secreto ese tipo de acontecimientos habían terminado para siempre con el comienzo de la era tecnológica.”
― Frank Schätzing, El quinto día

“Por ahora sólo puedo decirte en qué coinciden los expertos. —¿En qué? Johanson se reclinó hacia atrás y cruzó las piernas. —En que no coinciden. —Muy instructivo.”
― Frank Schätzing, El quinto día

“Juan Narciso Ucañan went to his fate that Wednesday, and no one even noticed.”
― Frank Schätzing, The Swarm: A Novel

“Pese a la prohibición de 1994, se siguen arrojando desechos atómicos al mar. En el desagüe de la planta de reprocesamiento francesa de La Hague, los buzos de Greenpeace han verificado una radiactividad diecisiete millones de veces superior a la de las aguas no afectadas. En las aguas costeras de Noruega, las algas y los cangrejos están contaminados de tecnecio, un elemento radiactivo.”
― Frank Schätzing, El quinto día

“Averages might mean something to bureaucrats and engineers, but the sea had no truck with statistics: it was a succession of unpredictable circumstances and extremes. A particular stretch of water might have an average wave height of ten metres, but if you were hit by a one-off thirty-metre monster that statistically didn’t exist, the average would be of precious little comfort: you would die.”
― Frank Schätzing, The Swarm: A Novel

“Muchos investigadores eran así. Se los tildaba de aventureros, pero en realidad sólo aceptaban la aventura porque les permitía acceder al conocimiento.”
― Frank Schätzing, El quinto día

“Gli scienziati ritenevano che il limite inferiore delle dimensioni corporee per un essere intelligente fosse dieci centimetri, e quindi la possibilità di trovare un Aristotele che zampettava era praticamente pari a zero. Figuriamoci un Aristotele unicellulare.”
― Frank Schätzing, The Swarm

“Jeder trug eine tiefe Sehnsucht nach Gesellschaft in sich, nach der Gesellschaft intelligenter Wesen, die keine Menschen waren.”
― Frank Schätzing, Der Schwarm & Nachrichten aus einem unbekannten Universum: Die ganze Meeres Box

“Ich bin drei Jahre älter, und der Ältere ist immer weiser als der Jüngere. Da ich mich nicht für Weise halte, könnt Ihr ungefähr ermessen, wo Ihr steht. Und jetzt Ruhe!”
― Frank Schätzing, Tod und Teufel

“Der Herr bewahre uns vor deiner hüllenlosen Ungestalt!”
― Frank Schätzing, Tod und Teufel

“That’s why Fenwick and Oliviera went for the noise theory,’ said Palm. ‘Years ago, when the navy started experimenting with sonar, there was an upsurge in beachings all over the world. Large numbers of whales and dolphins died. They all showed signs of heavy bleeding in the brain and in the inner ear - injuries consistent with noise damage. In each instance, environmentalists proved that NATO military exercises had been going on close to where the bodies were found. But tell that to the navy!”
― Frank Schätzing, The Swarm: A Novel

“We live in an age of bacteria. For over three billion years they’ve existed in their present form. Humanity is just a passing fashion, but even when the sun explodes, somewhere, somehow, a few of those microbes are bound to survive. They’re the planet’s real success story, not humans.”
― Frank Schätzing, The Swarm: A Novel

“obsessed with assuring our own perpetuity that our goals seldom coincide with what would be good for humankind.”
― Frank Schätzing, The Swarm: A Novel