George Alec Effinger > Quotes

“Just because your electronics are better than ours, you aren't necessarily superior in any way. Look, imagine that you humans are a man in LA with a brand-new Trujillo and we are a nuhp in New York with a beat-up old Ford. The two fellows start driving toward St. Louis. Now, the guy in the Trujillo is doing 120 on the interstates, and the guy in the Ford is putting along at 55; but the human in the Trujillo stops in Vegas and puts all of his gas money down the hole of a blackjack table, and the determined little nuhp cruises along for days until at last he reaches his goal. It's all a matter of superior intellect and the will to succeed.

Your people talk a lot about going to the stars, but you just keep putting your money into other projects, like war and popular music and international athletic events and resurrecting the fashions of previous decades. If you wanted to go into space, you would have.”
― George Alec Effinger, Live! from Planet Earth

“I looked at myself in the mirror. I looked awful, but I always look awful in the mirror. I keep myself going with the firm belief that my real face is much better looking.”
― George Alec Effinger, When Gravity Fails

“You want to be grateful for every precious second, but you simply can’t do it. It’s not in human nature to live life to the fullest. Haven’t you ever noticed that equal amounts of pain and joy are not, in fact, equal in duration? Pain drags on until you wonder if life will ever be bearable again; pleasure, though, once it’s reached its peak, fades faster than a trodden gardenia, and your memory searches in vain for the sweet scent.”
― George Alec Effinger, When Gravity Fails

“It was a good thing I wasn’t afraid, because I was scared stiff.”
― George Alec Effinger, When Gravity Fails

“The longer I observe the way people really act, the happier I am that I never pay attention to them.”
― George Alec Effinger, When Gravity Fails

“Jesus, what a nuisance it was, being desperate to stay alive.”
― George Effinger

“if I examine myself closely enough, I find hints of every objectionable quality known to man.”
― George Alec Effinger, When Gravity Fails

“I closed my eyes and wished I believed in something enough to pray to it.”
― George Alec Effinger, When Gravity Fails

“Drugs are your friends, treat them with respect. You wouldn’t throw your friends in the garbage. You wouldn’t flush your friends down the toilet. If that’s the way you treat your friends or your drugs, you don’t deserve to have either. Give them to me. Drugs are wonderful things. I won’t listen to anybody trying to get me to give them up. I’d rather give up food and drink—in fact, on occasion, I have.”
― George Alec Effinger, When Gravity Fails

“That was about as effective as blaming it on God, and as practical, too. You couldn't get a lawyer to sue either of them.”
― George Effinger

“The information I got from one person often contradicted the version I heard from another, so I’d long ago gotten into the habit of trying to hear as many different stories as I could and averaging them all out.”
― George Alec Effinger, When Gravity Fails

“It was one of those rare times of shared happiness, of perfect contentment. We had a feeling of expectation, that what was already wonderful would only get better and better as time went on. These moments are one of the rarest, most fragile things in the world. You have to seize the day; you have to recall all the rotten, dirty things you endured to earn this peace. You have to remember to enjoy each minute, each hour, because although you may feel like it's going to last forever, the world plans otherwise. You want to be grateful for every precious second, but you simply can't do it. It's not in human nature to live life to the fullest. Haven't your ever noticed that equal amounts of pain and joy are not, in fact, equal in duration? Pain drags on until you wonder if life will ever be bearable again; pleasure, though, once it's reached its peak, fades faster than a trodden gardenia, and your memory searches in vain for the sweet scent.”
― George Alec Effinger, When Gravity Fails

“The police don’t enforce laws; they don’t even get busy until after the laws are broken. They solve crimes at a pitifully low rate of success. What the police are, to be honest, is a kind of secretarial pool that records the names of the victims”
― George Alec Effinger, When Gravity Fails

“After sex, all animals are sad; after any kind of pleasure, really. We’re not built for pleasure. We’re built for agony and for seeing things too clearly, which is often a terrible agony in itself. I loathed myself then, and I loathed myself now. Dr.”
― George Alec Effinger, When Gravity Fails

“If I have to go into that good night, I'm goin' gentle; the hell with whoever said not to. That sucker's dead, man, so what did he know? Not even the courage of his convictions.”
― George Alec Effinger, When Gravity Fails

“I hadn't heard such a ridiculous piece of sophistry since the days when the old shaykh who lived in a box in our alley in Algiers tried to prove that the entire Earth was flat because the city of Mecca was flat. Which it isn't.”
― George Alec Effinger, The Exile Kiss

“I've done good work for the city. I never compromised my integrity, except a few times.”
― George Alec Effinger, When Gravity Fails

“She would have made a great lizard, basking on a hot rock in the sun.”
― George Alec Effinger, When Gravity Fails

“Children begin by loving their parents; after a time they judge them; rarely, if ever, do they forgive them.”
― George Alec Effinger, A Fire in the Sun

“The two women looked at me as if I were the Messiah returning with their personal salvations sealed in separate envelopes.”
― George Alec Effinger, When Gravity Fails

“he has this huge blind spot where other people have a sense of humor.”
― George Alec Effinger, The Exile Kiss

“Be cheerful, my brother!" he said. "You're alive, and you're with friends!”
― George Alec Effinger, The Exile Kiss

“It will be wry and ironic yet containing seemingly important statements about the human condition.”
― George Alec Effinger, The Wolves Of Memory

“Ben Sadiq is a pirate, all right,” said the qadi, “but he has charisma. He knows how to make you smile while he robs you.”
― George Alec Effinger, Budayeen Nights

“I rolled over and faced the cracked green wall. I regretted that simple action immediately; it had felt like a slow-motion film with every other frame missing.”
― George Alec Effinger, When Gravity Fails

“This nigger girl scared for white bwana.”
― George Alec Effinger, When Gravity Fails

“Hartstein was trying to keep himself under control. He wanted to scream; getting information from Brannick was like getting credit from the phone company.”
― George Alec Effinger, The Bird of Time

“How the months fly when you take a lot of drugs.”
― George Alec Effinger, When Gravity Fails

“You just can’t expect business to start immediately, not until you’d drunk at least three cups of coffee. If you declined sooner, you risked insulting your host. All the while the coffee- and tea-drinking was going on, Hassan and I asked after the health of the other’s family and friends, and called on Allah to bless this one and that one and protect all of us and the whole Muslim world from the depredations of the infidel.”
― George Alec Effinger, The Budayeen Cycle: When Gravity Fails, A Fire in the Sun, and The Exile Kiss

“They introduce some new technology and no matter how much good it does for most people, there’s always a crazy son of a bitch who’ll find something twisted to do with it.”
― George Alec Effinger, A Fire in the Sun