Peter

“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

“Madness, by the life of the Prophet! Audran felt as if he were peering through a narrow tunnel, seeing the world with Abu Adil's mean, self-centered outlook. Things were only good for Abu Adil, or bad for Abu Adil; if they were neither, they did not exist.”
― George Alec Effinger, The Exile Kiss

“People want to be told that they're afraid of all the right things. It's easier that way. They don't have to go to the trouble of learning anything new.”
― Cherie Priest, Chapelwood