140 Quotes by Gregory Benford

A truly happy person is one who can enjoy the scenery on a detour.

Even their stable societies oscillated between banquets and barbarism.

Humans and animals regard each other across a gulf of mutual incomprehension. With aliens, that has to go double.

The biggest mistake is being too afraid of making one.

Redwing had read somewhere that one of his favourite writers, Ernest Hemingway, had been asked what was the best training for a novelist. He had said “an unhappy childhood.” Redwing had enjoyed a fine time growing up, but he wondered if this whole expedition was unfolding more like a novel, and would be blamed on one person, one character, the guy in charge: him. Maybe you got a happy childhood and then an unhappy adulthood, and that’s how novels worked.

Flattery isn’t the highest compliment – parasitism is.

Script writing advice, from (William?) Rotsler (p.80)"Funny is better than seriousShort is better than longShort and funny is where you stop.

Scientists require apparatus, but mathists splendidly require only writing tools and erasers. Better, philosophers do not even need erasers

Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, is the reverse.