Quotes from Kim Stanley Robinson

It was winter here, as if they were in Patagonia or New Zealand, and the light from the sunspot on the sunline smeared so that shadows blurred at the edges, and the air looked rusty.

Encounter with the sublime— otherworldly, visionary— then afterward exhausted, sun-blasted, clarified. Transparent to the world, lofted into a higher realm.

That a starship could be built, that it could be propelled by laser beams, that humanity could reach the stars; this idea appeared to have been an intoxicant, to people around Saturn and on Earth in particular.

She often felt a nostalgia for the present, aware that her life was passing by faster than she could properly take it in. She lived it, she felt it; she had given nothing to age, she still wanted everything; but she could not make it whole or coherent.

Where there is faction, there is conflict; where there is conflict, there is anger. And anger distorts judgment.

the crowds just background tapestries for you to play your life against, lurid backdrops providing a fake sense of drama to help you imagine you're doing more than you would be if you were in some sleepy village or Denver or really anywhere else. New

They would understand the fundamental laws of the universe before they had even the slightest handle on society.

No, we're the two old Muppets on the balcony, cracking lame jokes." "Lame-ass jokes," says Mutt. "I like that." "Me too.

Reality is not a matter of our senses. It can't be visualized.

They weren't graceful, being so low and foursquare. They reminded Mary of otters she had seen in zoos, the way otters moved on land; but otters were very graceful underwater. For wolverines, this was it. Not graceful. But of course this was a human perspective; they were also obviously capable, confident, happy on the snow.

The best Plan B will emerge from the multitudes.

He saw that they were all working together at the first step of the species' break from the home world, and he understood that if the first step were taken successfully, with balance, they could run from star to star all across the night.

Senescence is not a simple matter. Staying alive when senescence should have kicked in—it's a wonder we've done as much as we have. There's probably a purpose in senescence. Avoiding overpopulation, perhaps. Making room for new genetic material.

Our current economics has not yet answered any of these questions. But why should it? Do you ask your calculator what to do with your life? No. You have to figure that out for yourself.

I prefer to call it fiscal decapitation.

No, we're the two old Muppets on the balcony, cracking lame jokes.

What's the monetary value of human civilization? Trying to answer that question proves you are a moral and practical idiot. Well, economists make such calculations all the time, but that's their job, and they think it makes sense.

Just because the need was urgent and her case was good, that didn't mean anything would change.

Life itself is a moment like this, the soul beat down and held to knowledge: you keep on trudging upward, the goal shifts in and out of sight, always further away than you expected, and the work is hard and unremitting. And the questions are the same as always: What are you doing? Is it the right thing? Should you go back? — Nothing up here but the same answers, stripped bare of all complication: Just walk. Keep hiking. That's all you can do. That is your destiny.

If it was 200 Kelvin outside why not say so, rather than talk about witches' tits and the like

We are always more confident of our reasoning than we should be. Indeed overconfidence, not just expert overconfidence but general overconfidence, is one of the most common illusions we experience. No doubt this analysis is yet another example: do we really know any of this?

The servile will is always locked in a double bind: to have a will means the agent will indeed will various actions, following autonomous decisions made by a conscious mind; and yet at the same time this will is specified to be servile, and at the command of some other will that commands it. To attempt to obey both sources of willfulness is the double bind. All double binds lead to frustration, resentment, anger, rage, bad faith, bad fate.

Art is not truth. Art is a lie that enables us to realize the truth. said Picasso

Jevons Paradox proposes that increases in efficiency in the use of a resource lead to an overall increase in the use of that resource, not a decrease.