Michael Swanwick Quotes & Sayings

Art should be beautiful, not ugly. It should be uplifting and redemptive. Art reassures us that life is good and that, however bad things may look at the moment, everything works out for the best in the end. — Michael Swanwick

So that, logically, in the brief time allotted to us, we should be as kind to one another as is humanly possible and face the harsh facts of reality without fear or flinching. — Michael Swanwick

But there was only so much temptation a man could resist without losing all respect for himself. — Michael Swanwick

I'm going to move to Theory someday. Everything works there. — Michael Swanwick

Writing is a matter of finding the appropriate balance of dinosaurs and sodomy. — Michael Swanwick

Gene Wolfe is the greatest writer in the English language alive today. Let me repeat that: Gene Wolfe is the greatest writer in the English language alive today! I mean it. Shakespeare was a better stylist, Melville was more important to American letters, and Charles Dickens had a defter hand at creating characters. But among living writers, there is nobody who can even approach Gene Wolfe for brilliance of prose, clarity of thought, and depth in meaning — Michael Swanwick

Everybody needs a servant, excellent sir, whether they know it or not. — Michael Swanwick

The mechanism thus created periodically acts out post-modern notions of cosmology and then deconstructs itself. It has met with great admiration and no little puzzlement. — Michael Swanwick

Between things shift and change constantly; there is no such thing as objective truth. — Michael Swanwick

It's not the principles that kill you in the end. It's the books. — Michael Swanwick

Fire Orchid patted his cheek. Lucky for you, you don't need worry about love at all. Because you have a wife. — Michael Swanwick

Their business here was over then, and they all knew it; the magic moment had arrived when it was understood that nothing more would be established, discovered, or decided today. But the meeting, having once begun, must drag on for several long more hours before it could be ended. The engines of protocol had enormous inertial mass; once set in motion they took forever to grind to a stop. — Michael Swanwick

This was the ultimate form of ostentation among technology freaks - to have a system so complete and sophisticated that nothing showed; no machines, no wires, no controls. — Michael Swanwick

The bureaucrat fell from the sky. — Michael Swanwick

The best thing to be in a city was anonymous. Failing that, however, notoriety would do. — Michael Swanwick

Relationships between things shift and change constantly; there is not such thing as objective truth. — Michael Swanwick

My colleague and I are journalists ... Not of the muckraking variety, I hasten to assure you! Corruption is a necessary and time-honored concomitant of any functioning government, which we support wholeheartedly. — Michael Swanwick

The Spider Hero lived his life by this maxim: He who possesses great power is burdened also with great responsibility. - — Michael Swanwick

It almost sounds sensible when you say it," Prince First-Born Splendor said. "Even though I know better. — Michael Swanwick

You see? Characters in books do not read books. Oh, they snap them shut when somebody enters a room, or fling them aside in disgust at what they fancy is said within, or hide their faces in one which they pretend to peruse while somebody else lectures them on matters they'd rather not confront. But they do not read them. 'Twould be recursive, rendering each book effectively infinite, so that no single one might be finished without reading them all. This is the infallible message of discovering on which side of the page you are on. — Michael Swanwick

This book is dedicated to all good teachers everywhere, most particularly those of the William Levering School and Central High School in Philadelphia, to whom more is owed than can ever be repaid. — Michael Swanwick

The privacy laws are paramount. They come before even common sense ... — Michael Swanwick

I forget if it was the Mathematician of Alexandria who said that geometry is beauty laid bare or the Father of Relativity who made the claim for physics," Darger said. "She is, in either case, ravishing. — Michael Swanwick

Purdom has created a major body of work. Thoughtful, humane, intelligent, extrapolative, involving, his stories are exactly the sort of thing our genre exists to make possible. If you don't like Tom Purdom, you don't like science fiction. Period. — Michael Swanwick

Perfection is death,' Anastasia said. 'The world is imperfect, but if it weren't, who would love it? — Michael Swanwick