Quotes from Gardner R. Dozois

beyond that enormous vehicle, a hanging indigo shape like the manifestation of a tesseract, a rotating impossible object in five or six or thirteen dimensions: the throat of the vinculum created two million years ago by the beings in Andromeda.

Madame Curie said, 'We must believe that we are gifted for something and that this thing, at whatever cost, must be attained.

The girl may want more honesty. However, most of us want a comfortable life.

To disdain the moral pronouncements of hypocrites; to be true to my word; to always do what I promise, no more and no less. To hone my talent and wield it like a beacon in a darkening world.

I know what's wrong with me; and knowing your own flaws is the beginning of wisdom.

He was annoyed at his anger. He had failed to contain himself.

had to be maintained. It took only minutes to carve a fresh

She suspected that civilization had been invented to make more stories. And

At the end of all rationality there is simply the need to decide and the faith to live through, to endure.

We primates reacted to threat with anger, so we got into fights without knowing why. Dawn

Did one have to be of woman born to be real? No. No. No. His kind of reality was a sufficient reality. He had no need to be ashamed of it. And, understanding that, he understood that Gioia did not need to grow old and die.

Naturals felt best in groups of a hundred or so, and even better if only a few dozen were involved. Hunting parties had been about that size, even for the big, long-extinct game. Many important institutions were of the same rough scale—the ancient village, governing councils of nations, commanding élites of vast armies, teams playing games, orchestras, family fests. All human enterprises that worked were of that size, and nearly everything that failed was not. So

Civilization had long maintained the appearance of such communal closeness, in small units people could manage. Societies had evolved that could stack such social nuggets into vaster larger arrays. A squad of ten worked well together, and united with ten other squads could do far more. Those ten who commanded squads could then meet in a room and make up a squad themselves, and so on up a pyramid that could sum the labours of billions. All

All this was built on the firm foundation of primate bonding patterns. If the pattern broke down at the bottom, it gave a rabble. Loss of scale at the top led to dictators, who always fell in the long run. Democracy emerged and worked because it let people form groups they could actually manage and like. The

That's why children can surprise you. They never fill out the proper forms.