Kage Baker > Quotes

“I don't think humanity just replays history, but we are the same people our ancestors were, and our descendants are going to face a lot of the same situations we do. It's instructive to imagine how they would react, with different technologies on different worlds. That's why I write science fiction -- even though the term 'science fiction' excites disdain in certain persons.”
― Kage Baker

“Funny thing about those Middle Ages, said Joseph. "They just keep coming back. Mortals keep thinking they're in Modern Times, you know, they get all this neat technology and pass all these humanitarian laws, and then something happens: there's an economic crisis, or science makes some discovery people can't deal with. And boom, people go right back to burning Jews and selling pieces of the true Cross. Don't you ever make the mistake of thinking that mortals want to live in a golden age. They hate thinking.”
― Kage Baker

“Don't imagine she trembles over the dissecting table either, Smith. She has nerves of ice. Real Good can be as ruthless as Evil when it wants to accomplish something, let me tell you.”
― Kage Baker, The Anvil of the World

“I want you to tell all these people that I wanted more time to spend with them. Tell them I meant to, tell them I wanted to hear what they said and tell them what was on my mind.”
― Kage Baker

“England was a cold, backward, rebellious little kingdom. It's king: Henry the Eighth, remembered principally for his six wives and the chicken legs clutched in his fat fists.”
― Kage Baker

“The leaf that spreads in the light is the only holiness there is. I haven't found holiness in the faiths of mortals, or in their music, not in their dreams: it's out in the open field, with the green rows looking at the sky. I don't know what it is, this holiness: but it's there, and it looks at the sky.
Probably though this is some conditioning the Company installed to ensure I'd be a good botanist. Well, I grew up into a good one. Damned good.”
― Kage Baker, In the Garden of Iden

“Worldly institutions fail because they require power and gold to operate. Power and gold attract wicked and greedy people. Wicked and greedy people are corrupters and betrayers. Therefore, worldly institutions become corrupt and betrayed. ...”
― Kage Baker, In the Garden of Iden

“Funny thing about those Middle Ages,” said Joseph. “They just keep coming back. Mortals keep thinking they’re in Modern Times, you know, they get all this neat technology and pass all these humanitarian laws, and then something happens: there’s an economic crisis, or science makes some discovery people can’t deal with. And boom, people go right back to burning Jews and selling pieces of the true Cross. Don’t you ever make the mistake of thinking that mortals want to live in a golden age. They hate thinking.”
― Kage Baker, In the Garden of Iden: The First Company Novel

“One should always avoid unnecessary unhappiness. Especially if one is an immortal. They taught us that in school.”
― Kage Baker

“And as the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so was my beloved among the sons. Et cetera. What would I give, to have that night back, out of all my nights? No treasure fleet could hold it, what I'd give; no caravan of mules could carry it away.”
― Kage Baker, In the Garden of Iden

“Besides, we weren't made to battle villains, because there weren't any. No nation, creed, or race was any better or worse than another; all were flawed, all were equally doomed to suffering, mostly because they couldn't see that they were all alike. Mortals might have been contemptible, true, but not evil entirely. They did enjoy killing one another and frequently came up with ingenious excuses for doing so on a grand scale—religions, economic theories, ethnic pride—but we couldn't condemn them for it, as it was in their mortal natures and they were too stupid to know any better.”
― Kage Baker, In the Garden of Iden

“A lengthy and painful discussion followed. It lasted through tea and dinner. It was revealed to Lady Beatrice that, though she had been sincerely mourned when Mamma had been under the impression she was dead, her unexpected return to life was something more than inconvenient. Had she never considered the disgrace she would inflict upon her family by returning, after all that had happened to her? What were all Aunt Harriet's neighbors to think?”
― Kage Baker, The Women of Nell Gwynne's

“That is what you're making of the end of your mother's life, child. What will you make of your own?”
― Kage Baker, The Bird of the River

“It wasn't all that different from any particularly demanding boarding school, except that of course nobody ever went home for the holidays and we had a lot of brain surgery.”
― Kage Baker, In the Garden of Iden

“Lady, the Faith is here,” he stated. “But we must build churches in our hearts, for surely those built in the world have all betrayed us.”
― Kage Baker, In the Garden of Iden

“You know why I’ve survived in this job, year after year, lousy assignment after lousy assignment, with no counseling whatsoever? Because I have a keen appreciation of the ludicrous. Also because I have no choice.”
― Kage Baker

“Boy, you're good at figuring things out. Isn't he? Except that if anybody's the devil in this room it's _you_, buster." An extraordinary bitterness came into his face. "I've seen you before. I know you, all right, preacher man. Age after age, you come back. You always lead the crusades. You're so damned golden-tongued, other people just flock to die for your causes. You die with them, it's true, because you're stupid enough to believe your own great lies; but you always come back again somehow. Oh, I know _you_.”
― Kage Baker, In the Garden of Iden

“No one deserves good or evil fortune," said Lady Beatrice. "Things simply happen and one survives them the best one can.”
― Kage Baker, The Women of Nell Gwynne's

“If you ordered up a whore here, you'd probably get a theater major doing Joan Crawford as Sadie Thompson. I wonder what would happen if I ordered up a Hershey bar?" His eyes lit up for a moment. "I wonder what would happen if I ordered up a whore and a Hershey bar?”
― Kage Baker, The Graveyard Game

“To make a really effective monster you need to begin with a good man and tell him lies.”
― Kage Baker, The Sons of Heaven

“Arrows you may dodge and fever you may antibody for, but mortal grief is a misfortune you cannot escape.”
― Kage Baker, In the Garden of Iden: The First Company Novel

“I may cut my coat to follow fashion, sir, but not my conscience.”
― Kage Baker, In the Garden of Iden

“Smashing things is the violent way stupid mortal monkeys solve their problems.”
― Kage Baker

“True believers aren’t real receptive to the idea that what they’re telling you is just mythology.”
― Kage Baker

“People like these have done more to relieve human misery than any prophet with a manifesto ever will. They number in the millions, these mortals, but they don’t make it into the history books much. They don’t do anything sweeping or controversial. They live their lives, contribute their bits of good work, and die quietly in their beds without recognition or reward. Usually.”
― Kage Baker, In the Garden of Iden: The First Company Novel

“Nurse Balnshik, Lord Emenwyr's minder, is 100% demon, but glamorous:
"Do you know any other midwife who can also tear apart armored warriors with her bare, er, hands? Lovely and versatile.”
― Kage Baker, The Anvil of the World

“I only became aware that my eyes had filled with tears when I noticed some commotion in the treetops, far off outside the perimeter wall. I blinked and looked again. There were monkeys out there fighting, screaming and pelting one another with rotten fruit.”
― Kage Baker, In the Garden of Iden

“He is aware that he feels a vague respect for the woman. Mendoza, at least, had never done the reasonable thing, never settled for less, but held to her one insane passion even as it had dragged her into the flames. Such a valuable quality in a pawn.”
― Kage Baker, The Children of the Company

“We are time machines! The truth’s been right in front of our noses since cinema was invented. Hell, since photography was invented. Hell, since writing was invented. Make an image of something, and it escapes the flow of time. That’s why it’s forbidden! Dickens had a grasp on it with his ghosts, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley almost got it, and Einstein came so close to the truth.”
― Kage Baker, Mendoza in Hollywood

“It was suitably like limbo to depress the spirits of an ordinary man, let alone one with Alec's problems.”
― Kage Baker, The Life of the World to Come