Greg Bear Quotes & Sayings

When all hopes are lost, only then does reality acquire that sharp focus that defines who we are and what we have become. — Greg Bear

I'm still out there. In my head. I have to sort it out or I'll never come home. — Greg Bear

Angrier and angrier, that he had to do such things because men were filled with arrogant greed, because some wished to rule with neither the wit nor the self-knowledge to see their inadequacies - and how many of their people would die. — Greg Bear

We're told another large-scale terrorist attack is inevitable by those people who have committed so many resources to preventing it. They likely know what they're talking about. — Greg Bear

They understood the universe in ways we never will. We can't unlock their secrets - but now, apparently, we can destroy all they ever made. That's what I call progress. — Greg Bear

We've been sitting in our tree chirping like foolish birds for over a century now, wondering why no other birds answered. The galactic skies are full of hawks, that's why. Planetisms that don't know enough to keep quiet, get eaten. — Greg Bear

All things will be ambiguous, for this is the curse of wisdom. — Greg Bear

So this additional indignity will be inflicted upon you. It means, I believe, that humans will not end here, but may rise again - fight again. Humans are always warriors. — Greg Bear

The death of a world is judgment of its inadequacy. Death removes the unnecessary and the false. — Greg Bear

In the society of would-be-gods, a humble man is always polite. — Greg Bear

It went okay." Kaye shifted her eyes to one side and shrugged. "Rachel Browning tried to pull down my shorts."
"Did she succeed?" Cross asked.
"Got them down to my curlies," Kaye said.
The young men looked ready to appear shocked, should Cross be. Cross laughed. "Jesus, Kaye. I never know what I'm going to hear from you. You drive my PR folks nuts. — Greg Bear

To fight an enemy properly, you have to know what they are. Ignorance is defeat. — Greg Bear

Why do we capital-N Nerds love Mars so much? Because it's beautiful, it's tough, it's buried in our mythic, childhood memories. It's covered with human triumphs but also with sad stories of failure. — Greg Bear

Thought moves like a dissociation of leaves across a lawn in a breeze. — Greg Bear

All that I was, but for reflections in a cracked mirror, has been lost for a long, long time. — Greg Bear

To see the awful things is to see life as it really is. It makes you sharper, stronger, superior. You can stand it when others cannot. — Greg Bear

Ray Bradbury is, for many reasons, the most influential writer in my life. Throughout our long friendship, Ray supplied not only his terrific stories but a grand model of what a writer could be, should be, and yet rarely is: brilliant and charming and accessible, willing to tolerate and to teach, happy to inspire but also to be inspired. — Greg Bear

It's been a great place to get in touch with what people are really thinking. And to make contact with readers and other writers. Egalitarian, wide open, like the Wild West! — Greg Bear

Once again, human history proved that the worst mistake possible in politics was underestimating one's opponents. Van — Greg Bear

Grief is not productive. It simply represents an inefficiency in accepting change of status. — Greg Bear

You seem to like helping, taking care of people," he said. "That is admirable."
"You enjoy being nurtured?"
"Well, that isn't all you promise. When you touch me, I feel a fire at my center. You want me to grow and find my true story, my purpose. You seem to want to be there when I see new things. You want to share and enjoy my discoveries. — Greg Bear

He held her hand and shook his head. "They're inside, part of us by now. They are us. Where can we escape? — Greg Bear

The asteroid was longer on the inside than it was on the outside. The seventh chamber went on forever. — Greg Bear

What I could not understand was why the Didact had decided to save one of those very weapons whose creation he had so decisively opposed. — Greg Bear

Life on earth is hard. Competition for the necessities of life is fierce. How ridiculous to believe that the law of harsh survival would not be true elsewhere, or that it would be negated by the progress of technology in an advanced civilization ... — Greg Bear

Chemists did it in their tubes and doctors did it with patience, but only a techie would do it in geometric progression. — Greg Bear

They're trying to understand what space is. That's tough for them. They break distances down into concentrations of chemicals. For them, space is a range of taste intensities. — Greg Bear

Nothing is lost. Nothing is forgotten.It was in the blood, the flesh,And now it is forever. — Greg Bear

Rendezvous with the robots after a fast — Greg Bear

All dreams are young, my host, my friend. All dreams belong to youth, whether they be nightmares or idylls. — Greg Bear

We fought and argued and loved and learned through the long, cold voyage. We chose teams, disbanded, re-formed, chose again, and now the fit is perfection within diversity. — Greg Bear

In a world of fragile self-justification, the truth made no one happy. — Greg Bear

Desert and Death Valley were the Mecca and Al Medina — Greg Bear

I now understand why humans smile. Forerunners have done all they can to banish smiles. Not all smiles are about greetings and joy. Some smile in shared pain. — Greg Bear

She didn't want to change just to be better. Though there was always better to aspire for. It was very confused. — Greg Bear

But to fight something, you really have to try to understand its motivations - particularly when the something you're fighting holds most of the cards, the deck is stacked against you, and the whole gambling hall is on fire and filled with thugs. — Greg Bear

Marty knew about rituals. "That means we're supposed to do something a certain way so we won't feel guilty," he said. "You got it," Harry said. Marty — Greg Bear

Conservatism is not about tradition and morality, hasn't been for many decades ... It is about the putative biological and spiritual superiority of the wealthy. — Greg Bear

We hope for sympathy in a violent, damning, world, all that we've known and experienced in real life - as opposed to phantom memory. We long for confirmation and completion and justification - and we also long to survive and learn that our reckless existence has meaning. — Greg Bear

The fox speaks with the hurricane and says, "I need to travel far and fast. Can you take me?" The hurricane regards the puny fox with its huge, calm eye and asks, "What can you do for me?" "Why, I will let you whisper your dreams to me." "But I must kill whatever I carry. You are a living thing and do not wish to die." "If you do not kill me, I will listen to your inmost self, and tell all the animals, that they may feel sympathy for you." "What do I care for sympathy? I am all-powerful." "Yes, but someday, your winds will die, and my kits will tell this tale even when you are gone, of the time great-great-great-grandfather fox was carried by the winds and lived and learned their secrets." "But then they will not be afraid of me, and what good am I if I do not inspire fear?" "Oh, no living thing could ever be so strong they would not fear you. I give you something more. I give you a voice throughout time that is more than a wordless bellow of rage. — Greg Bear

We were not then powerful enough to erase all evidence of the Precursors, to destroy their star roads and citadels and other artifacts. And so we left at least one Precursor behind, to live out dreams of vengeance and hatred, to lay down plans in cold and darkness at the heart of a lost asteroid - over millions of years. — Greg Bear

Of course! We laid waste their fleets, attacked their outpost worlds. ... And the Forerunners themselves found a way to bring down the indestructible architecture of the Precursors, on Charum Hakkor. ... Charum Hakkor, once called the Eternal. — Greg Bear

Living things see only the surface, can't exist in the depths. Life is painted on the surface of the real. Death is the great unexplored volume. Death rises from the inaccessible, depth and death sounding so much alike ... There — Greg Bear

Sometimes the problem outshines the pain. — Greg Bear

He had performed this ritual before, getting into trouble and then coming to his mother, uneasy and uncertain, not sure precisely what sort of trouble he was in. With uncanny regularity, she had seemed to jump onto a higher plane of reasoning and identify his problems, laying them out for him so they became unavoidable. This was not a service that made him love her any more, but it did make her invaluable to him. — Greg Bear

Welcome to the truth of our world-a massive seed shot out to the stars, filled with deadly children. A seed designed to slay everything it touches. — Greg Bear

Odd how food and water and a clean body - and a few moments of rest - lead me into philosophy. — Greg Bear

No immunity and no cure. There is only struggle, or succumb. Either way, the Primordial will have its due. We have met our creators, they have given us the answers we sought - and that is our curse. — Greg Bear

For years, even before 9/11, I've been trying to warn that the threat from amateur biolabs will ultimately turn out to be far more troublesome than leakage from military labs - perhaps even more costly and deadly than nuclear terrorism. — Greg Bear

Having one's eyes opened doesn't make one grateful. — Greg Bear

No more will. No more freedom. Nothing new but agonizing death and never good shall come of it. We are the last of those who gave you breath and form, millions of years ago. We are the last of those your kind defied and ruthlessly destroyed. We are the last Precursors. And now we are legion. — Greg Bear

Altruism is masked self-interest. Aggressive self-interest is a masked urge to self-destruction. — Greg Bear

It's out there," Bitterness says. "Your monster. Mendicant Bias. Can't you feel it? — Greg Bear

Science fiction works best when it stimulates debate. — Greg Bear

But ingenuity is often indistinguishable from foolish play, and foolish play is one of those traits I find most endearing about humanity. — Greg Bear

Maybe that's what your machine calls infection - all the new information in my blood. Chatter. Tastes of other individuals. Peers. Superiors. Subordinates. — Greg Bear

There is nothing finer in the world than the telling of tales. Split atoms if you wish, but splitting an infinitive-and getting away with it-is far nobler. Lance boils if you wish, but pricking pretensions is often cleaner and always more fun. — Greg Bear

Stars I understand. They shed light and give life. It is the emptiness between that haunts me. — Greg Bear

Man is the poet who kills, Woman the angel who eats. — Greg Bear

This is the one who betrays Forerunners, their own greatest monster. We know this one. Remember? — Greg Bear

Throughout my life, I sought power and profit for myself, for my rate. Now, at long last, I think I understand the meaning of a crime against the Mantle. After this, no need to seek balance. I will await my penance here. — Greg Bear

Apocalypse could not be repealed by the democratic process. — Greg Bear

Occupation of vast reaches of space means nothing. It is control of population centers and essential resources that determines victory or defeat. — Greg Bear

Some adopted new strategies for survival; they went dormant. Others became dust that could regenerate our past forms; time rendered this dust defective. It brought only disease and misery; but that was good, we saw the misery and found it good. — Greg Bear

It is the bullet you don't hear that gets you. — Greg Bear

Humans believe in nothingness, in zeros. It is one of their distinguishing traits. They keep inventing nothing. Forerunners know otherwise. — Greg Bear

Sometimes I feel like a beetle crawling through a fusion power plant. I can feel a certain amount, see a certain amount, but I sure as hell don't understand everything. — Greg Bear

I will learn by screwing up. — Greg Bear

Work, fight, live. All the sweeter. Mind after mind will shape and absorb. In the end, all will be quiet with wisdom. — Greg Bear

Can the Flood choose to infect, or not to infect? — Greg Bear

This is solute, which will cause every animal killed by Halo action to instantly decay into component molecules. This will avert an ecological miasma. But it could also be construed as a way to hide a tremendous crime from later investigators. — Greg Bear

All it takes to get elected in twenty-first-century America is a mob of frightened sheep and a wolf with a nice smile, — Greg Bear

Having undergone that disintegration and dying of past individuals and rebirth into something vastly more powerful, all these creatures had joined millions of years before into its own early Gravemind, far more than the sum of its parts. — Greg Bear

My finest opponent, the Mantle accepts all who live fiercely, who defend their young, who build and struggle and grow, and even those who dominate - as humans have dominated, cruelly and without wisdom. — Greg Bear

They start again as children - all together. It is what the Composer was designed to prevent. — Greg Bear

It's kind of a misnomer about science fiction that science fiction is about anything other than people. It's about people doing stuff, sometimes doing extraordinary stuff. — Greg Bear

To translate kinesics or paralinguistic messages into words is likely to introduce gross falsification due not merely to the human propensity for trying to falsify statements about "feelings" and relationship and to the distortions which arise whenever the products of one system of coding are dissected onto the premises of another, but especially to the fact that all such translation must give to the more or less unconscious and involuntary message the appearance of conscious intent. — Greg Bear

You are what you leave behind. — Greg Bear

The horizon curved upward to both sides. Not good, not right. Horizons do not curve up. — Greg Bear

From horizon to horizon the sky was filled with stars to within a few degrees of a fresh sliver of moon, a tiny thing lost in the yawn of night. — Greg Bear

If we who are honored with life do not perceive the obvious, then we are forced to live it again, around another corner, from another angle. — Greg Bear

Of all the planets apart from Earth in our solar system, Mars is the most hospitable. Yeah. Right. Better keep my visit short. And yet, despite the discomfort, the danger, I love it here. I love coming back for these imaginary vacations. The sights are amazing. — Greg Bear

She has these strange gray eyes that let me see all the way back to when her scorn shaped men's lives. — Greg Bear

He had had a dream he couldn't remember clearly now. His mind shuffled palm leaves over the sand to hide the tracks of the subconscious at play. — Greg Bear

We may exist in all universes, but 'hear' only one because of our limitations, the valve of our desires, our practical, physical needs. All is vibration, with nothing vibrating across no distance whatsoever. All is music. A universe, a world, is just one long difficult song. The difference between worlds is the difference between songs. — Greg Bear

I begin to rant. I'm special, I have needs, I have a job to do - once I get my act together. I'm going to be important. — Greg Bear

Once, poets were magicians. Poets were strong, stronger than warriors or kings - stronger than old hapless gods. And they will be strong once again. — Greg Bear

If the Domain is destroyed, I have condemned my husband to an eternity of darkness, silence, with only his own rage and madness to keep him company. — Greg Bear

The asteroids interfere with the collapsing function of each emerging ship; in effect, either forcing them to abandon the transit, or to combine asteroid mass with the ship's. — Greg Bear

Robert's problem was familiar to Aquinas. He called it ignorantia affectata, cultivated ignorance. — Greg Bear

Oh, there will still be deception. The fresh crew will emerge as adults, will have memories of past training and lives. Our stories, our lives, will go on. I refuse to allow that love to die, just because it was never real. — Greg Bear

We survived the Shaping Sickness. Forerunners hoped to learn the secret of how we survived the Shaping Sickness, but we would not give it to them, even under torture! — Greg Bear

Equal in law is not equal in nature. — Greg Bear

You deserve whoever governs you ... Everyone is responsible for the actions of their leaders. — Greg Bear

There is no war so important that to win it, we must destroy our minds. — Greg Bear

Working in Isaac's universe was more of a treat than a challenge. — Greg Bear

The price of freedom - of individuality - is attention to politics, careful planning, careful organization; philosophy is no more a barrier against political disaster than it is against plague. — Greg Bear

Mother Nature is a bitch. — Greg Bear

UR-DIDACT: This being was not the Primordial I encountered on Charum Hakkor, but something else entirely - though it retained the Primordial's motives and thoughts and memories. It was a Gravemind - the Gravemind, more accurately. It was the Primordial's final act of revenge. — Greg Bear

Didn't anyone who changed things ultimately lead some people - perhaps many people - to death, grief, torment? — Greg Bear