Quotes from Harry Harrison

Though he knew that he was young, at this moment he felt that his days were almost over. He could see the future and the rest of his life as clearly as if he had already lived it, because it would be unchanging and no different from the lives of all the others around him.

This is the start of a new era, equal rights for men and women." She smiled at him and slid into her chair without another word. Damn, he thought, for another look like that I'd give her the whole thing.

so great was his feeling of rightness that he could ignore the dark shadow of the future.

His old personality had been stripped from his mind and a new one implanted. Only the body remained of the old Pepe who had loved Angelina and stolen a battleship.

When you have a plan put it into action instantly. Don't let it lie around and get stale and have other people start thinking about it themselves.

ferried across

You're none of these things out of the past. I had shouted. None of these things … Angelina. I had bellowed this and there had been no protest from her.

Looks like another scorcher today

All the tenants liked him and called him Charlie. All the employees hated him and he had never heard what they called him

both consciously and unconsciously you accept the society you know as the only one. Far from it. Culture is an invention of mankind, just like the computer or the fork.

Kerk slammed his hand down hard on the table. The dishes bounced and the table legs creaked. Laboratory reactions! he growled.

A man said to the universe: "Sir, I exist!" "However," replied the universe, "The fact has not created in me A sense of obligation."  —Stephen Crane

Just because some people saw the handwriting on the wall didn't mean they could get anyone else to read it too.

Nice, liberal democratic governments—that were started by a bunch of lads with guns and the immense desire to run things in a manner more beneficial to themselves.

If you can't vote them—shoot them.

the untold billions who led the bad life as mankind slowly built up the good life for you to lead. Do you ever think of all the people who suffered and died in misery and superstition while civilization was clicking forward one more slow notch?

One had been stung by an insect, Jason got the medikit to him in time, but he was so sick he had to turn back.

We are Citizens of the Outside. We have rejected the simplistic, boring, regimented, bureaucratic, moral, and ethical scriptures by which they live. In their place we have substituted our own far superior ones. We may physically move among them—but we are not of them. Where they are lazy, we are industrious. Where they are immoral, we are moral. Where they are liars, we are the Truth. We are probably the greatest power for good to the society that we have discarded.

You strike through to the heart of the matter

I am seventy-five years old and I reached this venerable state by staying out of trouble, keeping my mouth shut and not volunteering, just like I learned in the Army.

Try telling that to two-thirds of the governments that now exist, since that's about how many were founded by revolution. Nice, liberal democratic governments—that were started by a bunch of lads with guns and the immense desire to run things in a manner more beneficial to themselves. How else do you get rid of the powers on your neck if there is no way to legally vote them away? If you can't vote them—shoot them.

Only when he was working on his second glass did he remember to offer me some of this potable aqua regia.

Then he made a rush for the bar and choked down about a water-glass full of the local spirits. Only when he was working on his second glass did he remember to offer me some of this potable aqua regia.

Why? Jason asked himself. Why this intense and planetary hatred?