Quotes from Vernor Vinge

It's hard to be bored when you're as stupid as a line.

There was an old Qeng Ho saying, "You know you've stayed too long when you start using the locals' calendar.

if you watch trillions of things, you will often see one-in-a-million coincidences.

Yes," said Ravna, "on Nyjora." In the Age of Princesses, there had been the Elder Princess and the Younger, the Techie. The Age of Princesses was the most recent rediscovery of civilization in any known human history—and that civilization was also the ancestor of Ravna's Sjandra Kei and therefore of Johanna's Straumli Realm.

I'm a librarian, not a leader." "You're both! Librarians and archeologists have always been the ones to bring civilization back.

there is a deepness in the sky, and it extends forever.

And they finally had a use for Chitiratifor's flashy outfits.

A thousand million times, castle technologies had fallen to things like cannon; why should her world be different?

modern states realized that success did not come from having the largest armies or the most favorable tariffs or the most natural resources—or even the most advanced industries. In the modern world, success came from having the largest possible educated population and providing those hundreds of millions of creative people with credible freedom.

The light shining through was a rainbow from hell.

I never guessed I could cry so hard my face hurt.

So much technology, so little talent.

Sometimes the biggest disasters aren't noticed at all - no one's around to write horror stories.

The Universe] does not care, and even with all our science there are some disasters that we can not avert. All evil and good is petty before nature. Personally, we take comfort from this, that there is a universe to admire that can not be twisted to villainy or good, but which simply is.

Technical people don't make good slaves. Without their wholehearted cooperation, things fall apart.

Intelligence is the handmaiden of flexibility and change.

One of his greatest talents was empathy; no sadist can aspire to perfection without that diagnostic ability.

Once upon a time I was such a good liar; I could talk the fish right into my mouths.

Politics is good; when it works properly, disagreements get solved without people beating each other up. But when a regime knows its days are numbered, there's always the chance it may use its position to change the rules and make the debate it is losing irrelevant.

All evil and good is petty before Nature. Personally, we take comfort from this, that there is a universe to admire that cannot be twisted to villainy or good, but which simply is.

He claimed that nearby gun thunder cleared the mind - but most everybody else agreed it made you daft.

Sometimes terror and pain are not the best levers; deception, when it works, is the most elegant and the least expensive manipulation of all.

So High, So Low, So Many Things to Know

It is an edged cliché that the world is most pleasant in the years of a Waning Sun. It is true that the weather is not so driven, that everywhere there is a sense of slowing down, and most places experience a few years where the summers do not burn and the winters are not yet overly fierce. It is the classic time of romance. It's a time that seductively beckons higher creatures to relax, postpone. It's the last chance to prepare for the end of the world.