129 Quotes by Elizabeth Bear

When the world is ending sometimes you have to save the party until there’s time to bake.

Whichever group is in ascension at a given moment is, historically speaking, both unlikely to acknowledge the existence of abuses or bias, and also to justify the bias on any grounds they can – social, biological, what have you.

Friends don’t keep score.” Because friends don’t have to keep score, my da would of said. Friends just pitch in as needed, as they can.

After thousands of years, the ray-gun reached Earth. It fell from the sky like a meteor; it grew hot enough to glow, but it didn’t burn up. The ray-gun fell at night during a blizzard. Traveling thousands of miles an hour, the ray-gun plunged deep into snow-covered woods. The snow melted so quickly that it burst into steam. The blizzard continued, unaffected. Some things can’t be harmed, even by ray-guns.

There’s value in work you enjoy, or that serves a need. There’s no value in work for its own sake.

What would it do to your psyche if this were your sky? What would it do to the racial awareness of your species if this were their memory of their dirt-bound cradle, before they stepped out into the great emptiness beyond?

A barn owl was perched atop the refrigerator.

Scared of Farweather. Scared of whether or not my gravity trick was going to work if there was another living body in the way of it, or whether Farweather would have better control – or whether the ship itself would intervene with some kind of failsafe to protect her. And I was scared as well of what I might do if my plan worked and I actually did get the upper hand.

I am the Sovereign of Iss!” the girl declared. “And you are the daughter of Ciwril Xidyla! They had better listen to us.