Greg Bear

Why do we capital-N Nerds love Mars so much? Because it's beautiful, it's tough, it's buried in our mythic, childhood memories. It's covered with human triumphs but also with sad stories of failure.

— Greg Bear

Once, poets were magicians. Poets were strong, stronger than warriors or kings — stronger than old hapless gods. And they will be strong once again.

— Greg Bear

The hardest theme in science fiction is that of the alien. The simplest solution of all is in fact quite profound—that the real difficulty lies not in understanding what is alien, but in understanding what is self. We are all aliens to each other, all different and divided. We are even aliens to ourselves at different stages of our lives. Do any of us remember precisely what it was like to be a baby?

— Greg Bear

You deserve whoever governs you … Everyone is responsible for the actions of their leaders.

— Greg Bear

There is nothing finer in the world than the telling of tales. Split atoms if you wish, but splitting an infinitive—and getting away with it—is far nobler. Lance boils if you wish, but pricking pretensions is often cleaner and always more fun.

— Greg Bear

The battle was over. There were no victors.

— Greg Bear

To fight an enemy properly, you have to know what they are. Ignorance is defeat.

— Greg Bear

“We must know our enemy, at least a little.”“Yes, it is. What you know, you cannot hate.”

— Greg Bear

When evenly matched, you cannot win against your enemy unless you understand them. And if you truly understand, why are you fighting and not talking?

— Greg Bear

She saw that in all wars, the first stage was to dehumanize the enemy, reduce the enemy to a lower level so that he might be killed without compunction. When the enemy was not human to begin with, the task was easier.

— Greg Bear

There is no war so important that to win it, we must destroy our minds.

— Greg Bear

Ray Bradbury is, for many reasons, the most influential writer in my life. Throughout our long friendship, Ray supplied not only his terrific stories but a grand model of what a writer could be, should be, and yet rarely is: brilliant and charming and accessible, willing to tolerate and to teach, happy to inspire but also to be inspired.

— Greg Bear

The price of freedom—of individuality—is attention to politics, careful planning, careful organization; philosophy is no more a barrier against political disaster than it is against plague.

— Greg Bear

“I’m going to take you out tonight,” he said. “Another Heisenberg dinner.”“Shh! It’s still working. We’re cheating.”

— Greg Bear

Around her gulps of water, she repeated her prayer, until the monotony and futility silenced her.

— Greg Bear

Can’t own a woman, Mike. Wonderful companions, can’t own them.

— Greg Bear

“You’re a romantic, aren’t you?” she said.“I am too. The silliest people in the world are romantics.”

— Greg Bear

He may not have had time, but even allowing him the time, Vergil simply did not think such things through. Brilliant in the creation, slovenly in the consideration of consequences.Didn’t anyone who changed things ultimately lead some people—perhaps many people—to death, grief, torment?

— Greg Bear

Nothing will ever be the same again.No, perhaps not. Not until now.

— Greg Bear

Information can be stored even more compactly than in molecular memory. It can be stored in the structure of space-time. What is matter, after all, but a standing-wave of information in the vacuum?

— Greg Bear

“Very evocative. He seems to be confirming what I said last year—that the universe really has no underpinnings, that when a good hypothesis comes along, one that explains the prior events, the underpinnings shape themselves to accommodate and a powerful theory is born.”“Apparently not. Bad hypotheses, those that don’t fit what happen on our level, are rejected by the universe. Good ones, powerful ones, are incorporated.”

— Greg Bear

Nothing is lost. Nothing is forgotten.And now it is forever.

— Greg Bear

Sometimes I feel like a beetle crawling through a fusion power plant. I can feel a certain amount, see a certain amount, but I sure as hell don’t understand everything.

— Greg Bear

“That’s insane,” Lanier said.“Not very. It’s politics.”

— Greg Bear

Grief is not productive. It simply represents an inefficiency in accepting change of status.

— Greg Bear

Having one’s eyes opened doesn’t make one grateful.

— Greg Bear

“We’d like to agree with you.” He glanced at Arthur.“For the moment, then, amicable disagreement and open minds.”

— Greg Bear

Apocalypse could not be repealed by the democratic process.

— Greg Bear

“It’s not impossible,” Minelli said.“No,” Edward admitted, “but it’s paranoid as hell, and that’s the last thing we need, more fear.”

— Greg Bear

I sometimes think we deserve to die, we’re all so goddamned stupid.

— Greg Bear

Life on earth is hard. Competition for the necessities of life is fierce. How ridiculous to believe that the law of harsh survival would not be true elsewhere, or that it would be negated by the progress of technology in an advanced civilization...

— Greg Bear

Altruism is masked self-interest. Aggressive self-interest is a masked urge to self-destruction.

— Greg Bear

A Stellar’s jay hopped along behind him, watching closely for dropped crumbs. “It’s dark,” he told the bird. “Go to sleep. I've eaten already. Where were you? No food now.” The bird persisted, however; it knew humans were liars.

— Greg Bear

We are born in ignorance, we die in ignorance, but maybe sometimes we learn something important and pass it along to others before we die. Or we write it down in a little book.

— Greg Bear