Quotes from Cordwainer Smith

The revolution lasted six minutes and covered one hundred an twelve meters.

At sixteen Helen was already famous, and at seventeen already forgotten, and very much alone.

Surely I am me. There must be a me more than the beauty of my face, there must be a something other than the delicacy of skin and the accidental lines of my jaw and cheekbone. What have men loved if it wasn't me? Can I ever find out who I am or what I am if I don't let beauty perish and live on in whatever flesh age gives me?

Was that what people learned between the stars? To care for other people very much indeed and to spring upon them only to reveal love and not devouring to their prey?

You're safe, Elaine, you're safe,' said Charley-is-my-darling, his sly smile very warm and his smooth voice carrying the ring of sincere conviction. For himself, he did not believe a word of it. He thought they were all in danger, but there was no point in terrifying Elaine... He was frightened himself, but he was afraid of fear.

He was a man, in short, who had arranged his own life to live comfortably, selfishly, and well on the personal side, so that he could give generously and impartially of his talens on the official side.

He looked at his dry old hand and it seemed to him that in this atmosphere, he had himself become more reptilian than human. "I am caught by the dry, drab enturtlement of old, old age," he murmured, but the voice was weak and the robots did not hear him.

We shall take a star out of the skies and shall set thousands of worlds on fire...

There is no time for fear. It's much too interesting.

Joan commented, upon sentence, "My body is your property, but my love is not. My love is my own, and I shall love you fiercely while you kill me.

She is a cat," he thought. "That's all she is—a cat!" But that was not how his mind saw her—quick beyond all dreams of speed, sharp, clever, unbelievably graceful, beautiful, wordless and undemanding. Where would he ever find a woman who could compare with her?

The revolution lasted six minutes and covered one hundred an twelve meters.

but remember that I shall love your sorrow...

Great beliefs always come out of the sewers of cities, not out of the towers of the ziggurats.

crowding together to see something which would ease the boredom of perfection and time.

And now if they should break or you should fall, you might faint for a year or two. If that happens, your local system takes over: that's the pack on your back.

Water does nothing yet it penetrates everything. Inaction finds the road.

I myself went into a hospital and came out French.

Chang nodded sagely. "My father insisted on it. He said, 'You may be proud of being a scanner. I am sorry you are not a man. Conceal your defects.' So I tried. I wanted to tell the old boy about the up-and-out, and what we did there, but it did not matter. He said, 'Airplanes were good enough for Confucius, and they are for me too.' The old humbug!

Love is not proud. Love has no real name. Love is for life itself, and we have life.

Meeya Meefla, where

She warned him, kindly enough, about manners when he forgot the simple ceremonies of eating which everyone knew, such as standing up to unfold the napkin or putting the scraps into the solvent tray and the silverware into the transfer.

You and I are animals, darling, not even real people, but people do not understand the teaching of Joan, that whatever seems human is human.

The rest of the evening moved with the inevitability of good music.