Tau Zero Quotes
"Most of that afternoon they had wandered among the sculptures, he awed and delighted by his first experience of them, she bidding an unspoken farewell to what had been more a part of her life than she had understood until now."
"But when the sun went down, the garden seemed abruptly to come still more alive."
"‘As if they were alive, bound for the stars, and we must stay behind and grow old,’ Ingrid Lindgren murmured."
"‘I’m not the navigation officer,’ she said, defensive. ‘Also, I put the whole matter out of my mind as much as I can.'"
"‘You’ll find we Swedes are a courteous people.’ Lindgren smiled at Reymont."
"It makes me wonder why you spent today with me, then."
"I thought you might be lonely. You have no one, have you?"
"‘Restless, I suppose. And frankly, I made enemies in the Corps.'"
"We’ll be together for a number of years. Quite possibly for the rest of our lives."
"No matter how carefully you design a system, it will go bad and die."
"‘No, I’m the one who owes the apology,’ he said."
"I’m outward bound with no regrets and no pain that won’t heal."
"He was surprised at how much I had not seen before."
"You may recall that an official good-bye ceremony, complete with benediction, will be broadcast at Greenwich noon."
"I’ll suggest N & S. If the job gets botched, it can always be done over, till we run out of paint."
"I believe you will understand, and not repeat what I tell you."
"I’ve been poor my whole life, and I do have a poor man’s primitive morality, as well as some regard for privacy."
"A being that concerns itself with everything from quanta to quasars can spare attention for us."
"We’ve got years ahead of us. Unforeseeable troubles to outlive."
"We are going to keep on this devil’s hunt until we die."
"We must have law and discipline, you know. Without them, we die."
"Discussing it in the bridge, however, we got a thought. A possibility of escape, if we have the nerve and determination."
"I am no handsome young animal. I am … was … more proud and happy than I knew how to express when you agreed to be my partner."
"I realise that. I’m not asking for one. Nor offering it. I have simply come to like you better each time we have talked, or danced, or spent a night."
"The human animal wants a father-mother image but, at the same time, resents being disciplined."
"But enough to irritate, to be disliked, although respected. That’s good for the troops."
"It’s healthier to be mad at me than to dwell on personal woes."
"Therefore she adds benignity to the attributes of Ultimate Authority."
"The speed of light can be approached, but no body possessing rest mass can quite attain it."
"The universe which her crew observed could not be distorted further."
"Because by that time, years went by outside while minutes ticked away within."
"It is conceivable that we will be lucky and come upon our Nova Terra at the first star we try."
"Acceptance of the fact that we will never leave this ship."
"Supposing we do reach a planet in spite of everything, the community will need each woman's childbearing span at a maximum."
"The whole wretched lot of you. Only don’t come and peck at me any longer."
"The cosmos fore and aft could shrink toward a zero thickness wherein all the galaxies were crowded."
"We chase and strike at the shadow hart, and dew like blood from the wound will start."
"They hadn’t the courage to discuss it in detail. I do."
"He is tired. More tired than you imagine, Ingrid. And more alone."
"His defences are used up. I hear him talk sometimes, in his dreams, when they aren’t simply nightmares."
"What scandal can there be if you visit the two of us in our cabin?"
"One night, at least: to tell him and show him how you never stopped feeling."
"Our tau can’t be that far down, can it? We probably quartered a spiral arm."
"We’re interacting with dust and gas, nothing else."
"We have the sweat, tears, blood - in short, the unglamorous bodily excretions."
"Our worst enemy is despair; and it wrestles every one of us to the deck, every now and then."
"Our descendants will invent it, along with tedious epics about our heroism."
"The universe - the whole universe - it’s dying."
"We’re alive, we’re real, we have hope. What else do you want?"
"I’d like us to become - oh, the elders. Not imperialists; that’s ridiculous; but the people who were there from the beginning and know their way around, and are worth learning from."
"Once a crisis is past, once people can manage for themselves … what better can a king do for them than take off his crown?"