Quotes from Gregory Benford

There was a thin chain to thinking, he realized, which began with seeing something noticeable, which in time made you see something that wasn't apparent, which finally made you see something that wasn't even visible—if you were doing it right.

The secret of being a bore is to tell everything.

Without thinking he held his hands open in front of his chest.

Maybe it was common for intelligent beings anywhere to think of themselves as the crown of creation—The People—and everybody else as a smart animal at best.

the crew Luis went with could hit the bull's-eye within a hundred meters. "Good enough to blow old Adolf to atoms," Luis said. "That's why we should keep the A-bomb name." "Atom bomb?" Karl asked. "Adolf bomb." •  ââ'¬Â¢  ââ'¬Â¢ The drop sequence was in good shape, so Luis could turn to getting the shock-wave detectors launched from the following airplane, and the auto-cameras.

Government regulations had limited fabric lengths, banished pleats, and forbade having more than one pocket. Men now had a slim trim in the pant legs and women looked more military—gray flannel suits, low-heeled shoes in polished fake leather, shoulder-strap bags, berets and felt cloche hats.

Killeen had potted a Snout that carried edible foods for its organic parts. They had both stuffed themselves with the greasy goo.

When a particle's wavelength became smaller than the Schwarzschild radius, the disciplines of gravitation and particle physics merged. The minimum mass where this occurred was scarcely a thousandth of a grain of sand. Still, for fundamental particle physics this was incredibly huge, a million million million times the weight of a uranium nucleus.

With a knock, a slim army lieutenant came in, introduced himself as James Benford, and handed Groves a briefing summary folder. "You have to approve these, sir." Karl

It is the triumph of reason to get on well with those who possess none

Fermi turned to Bohr with weary eyes and a slanted smile, and shrugged. "So we thought we had discovered new elements. We even named them—hesperium, ausonium. Wrong! Mythical! They were ordinary old barium and iodine. We were careful—too careful.

he knew from studying maps in preparation: the broad avenues leading to the Brandenburg Gate. He had played Bach's Brandenburg Concertos records many times, intricate magic alive in the air. The gate that led to the town of Brandenburg an der Havel.

They got trapped, fought their way free.

He saw a small, secondary explosion in the mushroom column. A yellow sphere flared in orange and then smoke swamped it. It had to be chemical, but what— Ah, he thought. All the iron in the buildings and soil has been thrown up in fine particles. Hot, too. It met the oxygen. "A rust bomb," he whispered. Weird, but probably right. And nobody had thought of it before. Karl

The elevator brought them up slow and steady, giving them all time to reflect in silence.

Look, it's not love that makes the world go round, it's inertia

Moral high ground is a wonderful place to site your artillery. —NAPOLÉON

Back in the hard sunlight, the big open-air bus carried them

This universe wants to kill us, every day.

Time goes, you say? ah no! Alas, time stays, we go.

Freeman looked up and grinned. "Karl, this author is American and plainly loves twisted language. Listen: 'The idiot god Azathoth, that last amorphous blight of nethermost confusion which blasphemes and bubbles at the center of all infinity.' Superb nonsense." Karl snorted. "Why are you reading such stuff?" "It's a novel of horror. Seems appropriate in a war, somehow." Karl

Never do anything for the first time.

Overall," Nigel drawled, "I think I would prefer opium as the religion of the masses.

All our bright minds," Feynman said sardonically, "and we can't figure how to stop the enemy from dumping dirt on us." Freeman said with delicate precision, "We are hothouse flowers, really. Not made for the blunt edge of war." Nods