Quotes from Greg Bear

When all hopes are lost, only then does reality acquire that sharp focus that defines who we are and what we have become.

Mother Nature is a bitch.

I will learn by screwing up.

Dogs could mellow a wild boy, or open up a shy one.

We've been sitting in our tree chirping like foolish birds for over a century now, wondering why no other birds answered. The galactic skies are full of hawks, that's why. Planetisms that don't know enough to keep quiet, get eaten.

To see the awful things is to see life as it really is. It makes you sharper, stronger, superior. You can stand it when others cannot.

Thought moves like a dissociation of leaves across a lawn in a breeze.

They're trying to understand what space is. That's tough for them. They break distances down into concentrations of chemicals. For them, space is a range of taste intensities.

You are what you leave behind.

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

Robert's problem was familiar to Aquinas. He called it ignorantia affectata, cultivated ignorance.

Maybe that's what your machine calls infection—all the new information in my blood. Chatter. Tastes of other individuals. Peers. Superiors. Subordinates.

Equal in law is not equal in nature.

Nothing is lost. Nothing is forgotten. It was in the blood, the flesh. And now, it is forever.

Didn't anyone who changed things ultimately lead some people—perhaps many people—to death, grief, torment?

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.

You seem to like helping, taking care of people," he said. "That is admirable." "You enjoy being nurtured?" "Well, that isn't all you promise. When you touch me, I feel a fire at my center. You want me to grow and find my true story, my purpose. You seem to want to be there when I see new things. You want to share and enjoy my discoveries.

We hope for sympathy in a violent, damning, world, all that we've known and experienced in real life—as opposed to phantom memory. We long for confirmation and completion and justification—and we also long to survive and learn that our reckless existence has meaning.

From horizon to horizon the sky was filled with stars to within a few degrees of a fresh sliver of moon, a tiny thing lost in the yawn of night.

In the society of would-be-gods, a humble man is always polite.

Nature is a bitch goddess.

There once was an infant lost in the woods, crying its heart out, wondering why no one answered, drawing down the wolves

The asteroid was longer on the inside than it was on the outside. The seventh chamber went on forever.

The child, ravaged by wolves, falls quiet in the forest, and the long darkness is filled with an undisturbed silence.