Semiosis Quotes
"Grateful for this opportunity to create a new society in full harmony with nature, we enter into this covenant, promising one another our mutual trust and support."
"We will face hardship, danger, and potential failure, but we can aspire to the use of practical wisdom to seek joy, love, beauty, community, and life."
"The war had begun long before we arrived because war was their way of life."
"In heavier gravity, things fell faster and animals moved faster. We humans were slow and ignorant, still aliens."
"We had not expected paradise. We had expected hardship, danger, and potential failure."
"What human beings and other sentient species bring to the universe is the ability to make choices, to step beyond the struggle to survive and be the eyes and ears and minds and hearts of the universe."
"We’re the future of humanity, and we have a duty."
"The people on this planet don’t deserve to survive."
"It’s always a shock, but we knew things would go wrong."
"We’ll just have to do better. And how hard will that be?"
"Survival last, curiosity first. Better no life than this life."
"We left with questions and we came back with answers to questions we hadn’t even thought to ask."
"A beautiful city, with sparkling glass roofs and gardens of rainbow bamboo."
"We understand that we must endlessly make choices, and that our choices have consequences, and that we are not guaranteed health, happiness, or even life."
"Intelligence conquers the seasons, but there is little intelligence in the world."
"I can feel iron. It flows abundant from my roots to the tips of my leaves to make chlorophyll and transport electric charges for respiration and photosynthesis. Iron is growth, this iron from the flesh of many animals buried to feed me."
"Plants, Raja said, produce an endless variety of compounds, including antibiotics. On Earth, genetic engineering had created fruits and grains that contained medicines."
"Sometimes the best thing we can do is take care of ourselves."
"The universe didn’t care, and my happiness wasn’t important to it. But I could harm, and I could help, and I could be happy whether it mattered to anyone or not."
"I help, of course, I’m useful, but I’m not the real thing, and that’s why women don’t want me for more than a bit of fun and high-motility sperm."
"The Earth methods prescribed in the manual won’t work on Pax, of course."
"The growth and success of Rainbow City has allowed younger generations to create in ways we could not imagine."
"Why?" I heard that question whispered as we walked through the gate."
"You have the experience to handle the situation efficiently."
"The position might give me opportunities to find the killer faster."
"Criminals who act in an organized fashion are often sexually competent, charming, and stereotypically masculine."
"They may return to the crime scene, volunteer information, and anticipate being questioned."
"Less smart be-it bad because be-it less thinking."
"The killer will kill again if I don’t stop him or her."
"Truth may come in a fruit, but lying is my life."
"In our little city, everyone thinks we know everyone else, and we are wrong."
"I am angry with the killer beyond expression."
"Destructive behavior is motivated by desire for power."
"You speak of logic. I speak of desire. I am deeply motivated."
"Justice, equity, and compassion in our relations with one another."
"Freedom includes the freedom to lie, especially to ourselves."
"I am too old to change as much as I need to."
"I waited and watched the aurora lights glimmer in the sky."
"I am afraid of mistakes, I am afraid to lose control."
"I'm different from Jersey only in why I did what I did."
"I am the moderator and the commissioner of public peace."
"It is barbarous for eagles to eat Pacifists."
"Equality is not a fact, like the length of days."
"The difference between Jersey and me is that I will try to survive."
"I am pleased to be a moderator, especially a co-moderator."
"I have never seen a more miserable person, pale and drooped like a wilted flower."
"I want to pretend I know nothing special, that no killer is hovering over us."
"We are a long winter away from spring’s Naked Festival."
"The future can be a new way to live. You will like it."
"We are Pacifists. It’s time to live up to our name and make peace real."
"It is a question of knowledge and sophistication."
"Our job was to meet them and express our hope of friendship."
"Our ecosystem is disturbed and angry, as well as thirsty."
"We have found joy in our community, and they must not replace it with barbarism."
"Only intelligent creatures also create civilization. Civilization creates the idea of peace as well as war, and makes both possible."
"We spoke simply because thinking requires energy, and the strongest among us could survive well enough almost without thought because our lives were simple."
"I am a Pacifist. I have chosen the idea that I intend to make real."
"Dangerous because they produce strong reactions. Their effects may be cumulative. The goal is to disable them."
"Violence is a form of communication among animals, although your abilities to communicate render violence too crude for routine social relationships."
"We can’t control how much they ingest, though. Overdoses could cause respiratory failure."
"We can’t keep them drugged forever, and the first chance they get, they’ll attack."
"I count three orphans dead or too badly injured to move, and nine more injured, but that leaves approximately forty ready to attack, and the truth is that the orphans have the advantage with speed and communication."
"Only one human is left standing, and the rest, including Cedar, are injured or dead."
"The faster the better, because the situation is no longer chaotic: the orphans are clearly winning."
"The noises and scents are beyond description and sorrow, and occur at a pace that signals deliberate cruelty."
"Bellona has realized that the girl is relaying information, and broadcasts scents to gather an attack against the Meeting House."
"The orphans use their claws to blind and torture the screaming boy even as they hold him in front of themselves for cover."
"The orphans, like slugs, are not suitable for domestication, but for a different reason."
"I will not have animals like those in my service."
"I will bear the guilt, and I have ancient methods at my disposal."
"I hope the eagles will kill for me, but they may or may not be enough, and I want complete extermination."
"I am the biggest and most powerful creature on Pax, and the most dangerous, and I have made mistakes I cannot rectify."
"But I meant well. I meant greater happiness for all."
"A moderator may resign at any time by giving written notice to the Committee."
"The world offers many surprises when one is a small individual, because concentrated awareness is highly sensual."
"Cedar hadn’t arrived at the Meeting House when the Committee meeting began, but we had a lot to handle before her part of the agenda, anyway."
"Stevland told me beauty is a link among all of us."
"It’s one link, but I suppose we’ll need more. What do we have?"
"I had water and sunshine, and warmth and food."