Quotes from Elizabeth Bear

I was just the one who upgraded her software and made sure that nothing broke down. If anyone was equipped for the job, it was me, the professional computational linguist.

Mostly, Irizarry knew anger was a waste of time and energy. It didn't solve anything. It didn't fix anything. It couldn't bring back anything that was lost. People, lives. The sorts of things that got washed away in the tides of time. Or were purged, whether you wanted them gone or not.

I wondered who lonely women paid to listen. As with so much, it seemed as if the world had a solution for the one but not the other.

Nobody called her Moggy except for Mother, either. Nobody ever called me Kittycat except my family, and people who were looking for a fight.

Earth could have learned a long time ago that securing initial and ongoing consent, rather than attempting to assert hierarchy, is key to a nonconfrontational relationship. Because we're basically primates, we had to wait for a bunch of aliens to come teach us. We'd at least, by then, developed the tech to fix our brains so we could accept emotionally what logic should have showed us.

As any parent can tell you, it's better to keep your mouth shut and your eyes open when you go looking for kids who are being unreasonably quiet. They're probably doing something they don't want you to see, and if they hear you coming, they'll hide the evidence. I

A world of complexity in that syllable.

Bill blinked tears from his eyes, then fastened his gaze on me. "Bitch," he snarled—why they never think of anything cleverer I'll never know.

Marshal Reeves, watching me, snorted. "Live and learn, child," he said. "Everybody's worthy of respect.

A barn owl was perched atop the refrigerator.

It is possible to erase and mortify yourself to the point where you actually make more work for the people around you, because they are constantly doing emotional labor to support you. A well-developed martyr complex becomes a means of getting attention without ever having to take the emotional risks of asking for attention. It's a tendency, along with self-pity, that I use my rightminding to control.

It is possible to erase and mortify yourself to the point where you actually make more work for the people around you, because they are constantly doing emotional labor to support you. A well-developed martyr complex becomes a means of getting attention without ever having to take the emotional risks of asking for attention.

You ever hear somebody blithely say something so amazingly plastered over with bullshit it just makes your eyes bug?

On récolte ce que l'on sème. That

No, worse. It had never existed. I had invented it; I had allowed myself to be deluded, because I had so badly wanted it to exist. I had wanted to belong to a thing. I had wanted to need and be needed. Why are we born needing impossible things? Why is it that we all have things we need to live that simply do not exist in the universe? A purpose in life. Unconditional love? Our emotional needs met? Ha. What cruel asshole thought this shit up?

Some call it the Cherry Hotel. But most just say it's Madame Damnable's Sewing Circle and have done. So I guess that makes me a seamstress, just like Beatrice and Miss Francina and Pollywog and Effie and all the other girls. I

Just as well, as it saved me having to invoke privacy, or bite. Metaphorically speaking. Biting a colleague is probably grounds for dismissal, even—especially?—in a massively multispecies, massively multicultural work environment.

Only exploitation under various systems all claiming to be different, but all amounting to the farming of the many to make wealthy the few. Serfdoms and indenturehood and chattel slavery.

A good thing they didn't know I was traveling with a trio of warrior women. I wouldn't have stood a chance alone.

Anger is an inoculant. It gets your immune system working against bullshit.

a friend told me that in a good marriage, nobody wins." Matthew frowned, nibbling his thumbnail, noticing she'd sidestepped his question about the wards quite neatly. "I'm not sure I understand what you mean." "A marriage is a state of dynamic tension. It works as long as nobody gets the upper hand and keeps it." She

It's hard not to like someone who's genuinely interested in you. Or genuinely interested in things, in general.

Sometimes the truth, told right, was the best lie.

I wished I could offer her tea. You don't think about it, but all those little fusses we make over company have their purposes. They give us something to do with our hands and our anxiousness until everybody settles in and starts having fun.