Quotes from Elizabeth Bear

He made a noise she recognized, one that meant he was organizing whatever multidimensional information lattices inhabited his mental space into linear strings amenable to transmission through that inadequate medium, language.

Anchorage, which is about the stupidest thing you ever could get to naming a harbor. I mean, why not just call it Harbor, like it was the only one ever?

Few are the memories which are more than a handful of dust, to be let run through the fingers.

She is covered in sand, only on her right side. There are no clouds. She is alone. Seonag is used to being alone, even when she is surrounded by people.

After thousands of years, the ray-gun reached Earth. It fell from the sky like a meteor; it grew hot enough to glow, but it didn't burn up. The ray-gun fell at night during a blizzard. Traveling thousands of miles an hour, the ray-gun plunged deep into snow-covered woods. The snow melted so quickly that it burst into steam. The blizzard continued, unaffected. Some things can't be harmed, even by ray-guns.

I'm not concerned about any terrible things you might have done," he said quietly. "I'm concerned about the terrible things that happened to you.

Our earth was just one thin example of what was possible, and because it was possible, this history was inevitable

How will you know that you love, if there is no terror of losing? Is it love at all, if there is no risk? If it is safe?

If you have to constantly alter your natural mental state to survive a situation, doesn't it follow that the situation is toxic?

When he arrived, he found that this was true. New York was no less impressive for being mostly fictional. Of course, the place was lousy with writers.

All iron comes from stars," Seeker replied, her hand still not quite brushing the hilt of the blade. "It's the last element they can burn before they go nova. Iron's the skeletons of stars, and it's what makes our blood red. I

I watched the patterns of light sparkle across her back.

Lindy-hop could go back to being just a social thing. But where she belonged in life After the Meteor, was here. Here, she made a difference. Sprained ankle and all.

Forgiveness is cheaper than permission.

All that power they'd squirreled away had needed to be released, focused, channeled.

We cannot choose where we come from, but we can choose where we are going, and we can choose the routes we're willing to take to try to get there.

I don't have any control over what memories I get, when I get them. Except every single one of them is something I would have rather forgotten. -- "Erase, Erase, Erase

Spurred on by both the science and science fiction of our time, my generation of researchers and engineers grew up to ask what if? and what's next? We went on to pursue new disciplines like computer vision, artificial intelligence, real-time speech translation, machine learning, and quantum computing.

When you are a certain age or when you have lost certain things and people, Aimee's crippling grief will make a terrible poisoned dark sense.

They were also the person who kept the ox-sector Emergency Department of the largest hospital in the galaxy purring like an only slightly dyspeptic cat.

Though I am otherwise relentlessly normal, I have one peculiarity: I get along well only with people who are smarter than me.

Electricity is a remarkably simple—though dangerous—animal.

The greenhouse—distant cousin, Ida, reportedly something of a botanist. The bed where we conceived Lily: Great-great-great-great-Aunt Minerva. Aunt Augustine's dish set isn't just an heirloom—it really is Aunt Augustine.

Scared of Farweather. Scared of whether or not my gravity trick was going to work if there was another living body in the way of it, or whether Farweather would have better control—or whether the ship itself would intervene with some kind of failsafe to protect her. And I was scared as well of what I might do if my plan worked and I actually did get the upper hand