Quotes from Vernor Vinge

Little fish risking everything for a piece of godhood...and not knowing heaven from hell, even when they find it.

The illusion of self-awareness. Happy automatons, running on trivial programs. I'll bet you never guess. From the inside, how can you?

Half-assed programming was a time-filler that, like knitting, must date to the beginning of the human experience.

Here we begin frank speculation. And since we are speculating, we'll use those powerful pseudo-laws, the Principles of Mediocrity and Minimal Assumption.

We're long on high principles and short on simple human understanding.

He] was an insect wandering in the cathedral his mind had become.

We're endangered by our own success.

You are enjoying the gift of genius. When ordinary people are confronted with multiple tragedies, the pain scarcely increases. They simple can't feel the extra burdens. But you have a greater capacity for suffering.

Second by second, the Queng Ho counted from the instant that a human had first set foot on Old Earth's moon. But if you looked at it still more closely ... the starting instant was actually about fifteen million seconds later, the 0-second of one of Humankind's first computer operating systems.

Programming went back to the beginning of time. It was a little like the midden out back of his father's castle.

The hours came to minutes, the minutes to seconds. And now each second was as long as all the time before

Most civilizations had more fiction than they did real history.

Ravna became a librarian. "The ultimate dilettante!" Lynne had teased.

Hexapodia as the key insight

I have come to kill you."The death's heads shrugged. "You have come to try.