Quotes from Greg Bear

For years, even before 9/11, I've been trying to warn that the threat from amateur biolabs will ultimately turn out to be far more troublesome than leakage from military labs - perhaps even more costly and deadly than nuclear terrorism.

Man is the poet who kills, Woman the angel who eats.

Once, poets were magicians. Poets were strong, stronger than warriors or kings — stronger than old hapless gods. And they will be strong once again.

The price of freedom—of individuality—is attention to politics, careful planning, careful organization; philosophy is no more a barrier against political disaster than it is against plague.

It's kind of a misnomer about science fiction that science fiction is about anything other than people. It's about people doing stuff, sometimes doing extraordinary stuff.

Science fiction works best when it stimulates debate.

All it takes to get elected in twenty-first-century America is a mob of frightened sheep and a wolf with a nice smile.

We're told another large-scale terrorist attack is inevitable by those people who have committed so many resources to preventing it. They likely know what they're talking about.

It is no crime. I once felt affection for a Warrior-Servant as I hunted his ships and destroyed his fighters. No lover ever felt my attentions so fiercely.

According to legend, Path Kethona was first visited by Forerunners during our greatest period of exploration, over ten million years ago. Yet there was substantial doubt that voyage had ever happened. Records had long ago vanished. Not even Haruspis, entrusted with studying the Domain, could access those memories.

Stars I understand. They shed light and give life. It is the emptiness between that haunts me.

Can't own a woman, Mike. Wonderful companions, can't own them." "I know.

If we who are honored with life do not perceive the obvious, then we are forced to live it again, around another corner, from another angle.

I now understand why humans smile. Forerunners have done all they can to banish smiles. Not all smiles are about greetings and joy. Some smile in shared pain.

ERVs are useful during viviparous development. They help us subdue our mothers' immune systems. Otherwise, her lymphocytes would kill the embryos, because in part they type for the father's tissue.

So this additional indignity will be inflicted upon you. It means, I believe, that humans will not end here, but may rise again—fight again. Humans are always warriors.

Being scared is nothing," the old woman said. "Being bored, or ignorant—now that's a crime.

All that I was, but for reflections in a cracked mirror, has been lost for a long, long time.

We are more than any family could be. We fought and argued and loved and learned through the long, cold voyage. We chose teams, disbanded, re-formed, chose again, and now the fit is perfection within diversity.

chemists did it in their tubes and doctors did it with patience, but only a techie would do it in geometric progression.

Brilliant in the creation, slovenly in the consideration of consequences. Wasn't that true of every creator? Didn't anyone who changed things ultimately lead some people—perhaps many people—to death, grief, torment? The poor human Prometheuses who brought fire to their fellows. Nobel.

I begin to rant. I'm special, I have needs, I have a job to do—once I get my act together. I'm going to be important.

Explain it to me. God says he loves me but dumps me into a world of pain. You, so full of hate, so ignorant, he leaves alone. Self-righteous bigots he doesn't even touch. Explain that to me!

The death of a world is judgment of its inadequacy. Death removes the unnecessary and the false.