This isn’t life in the fast lane, it’s life in the oncoming traffic.
-Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett

Natural selection saw to it that professional heroes who at a crucial moment tended to ask themselves questions like “What is my purpose in life?” very quickly lacked both.
- Interesting Times

The class was learning about some revolt in which some peasants had wanted to stop being peasants and, since the nobles had won, had stopped being peasants *really quickly*.
-Soul Music

He did of course sometimes have people horribly tortured to death, but this was considered to be perfectly acceptable behaviour for a civic ruler and generally approved of by the overwhelming majority of citizens footnote: The overwhelming majority of citizens being defined in this case as everyone not currently hanging upside down over a scorpion pit.
-Sourcery

There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute nor common law.
-Robert Heinlein

The correct way to punctuate a sentence that starts: “Of course it is none of my business, but –” is to place a period after the word “but.” Don’t use excessive force in supplying such a moron with a period. Cutting his throat is only a momentary pleasure and is bound to get you talked about.
-Lazarus Long (Robert Heinlein)

Did you ever eat that cotton candy they sell at fairs? Well, philosophy is like that–it looks as if it were really something, and it’s awfully pretty, and it tastes sweet, but when you go to bite it you can’t get your teeth into it, and when you try to swallow, there isn’t anything there.
-Robert Heinlein

So note the twentieth century down as a century of tragedy and war and death–but also please note that it is the century in which the human race finally learned to read and write. More people will learn to read and write in the next forty years than in all the thousands of years of history. I firmly predict that this will be the most important historical fact about this, our century.
-Robert A. Heinlein

When the last living thing dies, my job will be finished. I’ll stack the chairs on the tables, turn off the lights, and lock the Universe behind me when I leave.
-Death

The catch is that most of these people range from eccentric to pure unadulterated out there. I’m hoping they’re enough in touch with the planet to believe they can’t vibrate their way out of this one without help. But honey, these folks are the nuts and flakes in the bowl of granola.
-Beth, about to rustle up some neo-pagans to avert world disaster

Morality consists of suspecting other people of not being legally married.

Why should we take advice on sex from the pope? If he knows anything about it, he shouldn’t!
-George Bernard Shaw

If you have an apple and I have an apple…and we exchange these apples, then you and I will still have one apple each. But, if you have an idea, and I have an idea…and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.
-George Bernard Shaw

Scriptures, n. The sacred books of our holy religion, as distinguished from the false and profane writings on which all other faiths are based.
-Ambrose Bierce

Christian: One who believes that the New Testament is a divinely inspired book admirably suited to the spiritual needs of his neighbor. One who follows the teachings of Christ in so far as they are not inconsistent with a life of sin.
-Ambrose Bierce

Heathen, n. A benighted creature who has the folly to worship something that he can see and feel. According to Professor Howison, of the California State University, Hebrews are heathens.
-Ambrose Bierce

There are two cities into which the Automobile Association of America ernestly advises it’s members not, under any circumstances, to bring their automobiles. Boston is the other one.
-Marion Zimmer Bradley

Pennsylvania was something like 700 miles of signs saying BRIDGE FREEZES BEFORE ROAD SURFACE, and she was going to have to drive past every one
Marion Zimmer Bradley

Let’s face it, there is a lot of crappy science fiction out there, and unless I really devote myself to the genre, it’s hard to just go into the book store and pick up something that isn’t going to be terribly lame. You can weed out all the books with large-chested women who are falling out of their uniforms on the cover (unless it’s written by Heinlein), but that can still leave you with entire rooms full of books to wade through. The science fiction section at my favorite used book store is bigger than the entire fiction and literature section. The fact that most of it is not classified as fiction or literature should tell you something. Let’s just say that I have been burned by quite a few terrible science fiction purchases. And this was back in high school, when I was still devouring Harlequin serial romance novels without blinking.
-Jessa Crispin

Everyone fears James Joyce because they know Ulysses is always looming in the background. There’s no need to fret. Portrait of the Artist is a more accessible book, something that won’t cause back pain if you lug it around with you. Just read Dubliners first.
-Jessa Crispin

If no one likes your book that does not mean you’re being “censored.” Maybe it just means you wrote a crappy book.
-Jessa Crispin

There is no such thing as fan fiction. If I thought there was, I might have to take some kind of action. Good thing there isn’t.
-John Ordover, Senior Editor of Pocket Books’ Star Trek division, on alt.startrek.creative

Speculative works of fiction produced at no profit for public consumption as a free, unsupervised means of promotion for one of Viacom’s largest franchises.
-JWinter (referring to Trek fic)

Will you convey my compliments to the purist who reads your proofs and tell him or her that when I write in a sort of broken-down patios which is something like the way a Swiss waiter talks,and when I split an infinitive, god damn it, I split it so it will stay split.
-Raymond chandler

My writing desk is starting to bow dangerously in the middle. Wonder why. ::counts library books:: Huh. Fifty-two. This is why I have a paranoid feeling every time I approach the circulation desk that they’re gonna take one look at me and say “No. Uh-uh. You can’t have any more. We know that library policy says you can have as many as you want, but you’ve caused a black hole to develop on the third floor and we’re cutting off your supply.
-Jess

I’m all in favor of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools. Let’s start with typewriters.
-Frank Lloyd Wright

This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.
-Dorothy Parker

God forbid that any book should be banned. The practice is as indefensible as infanticide.
-Rebecca West

There is only one group which would call for the banning of ‘The Diary of Anne Frank’ and I don’t care what they’re calling themselves these days.
-Allen Moore 1/87

“How many readings can you go to and hear the same lament: “I am deep and I am in pain. It is raining outside.”
-Greg Gatenby

“I always wanted to write a book that ended with the word mayonnaise.”
-Richard Brautigan

There is nothing fantastic or ultradimensional about crab grass… unless you are an sf writer, in which case pretty soon you are viewing crab grass with suspicion. What are it’s real motives? And who sent it here in the first place? It only looks like crab grass. That’s what they want us to think it is. One day the crab grass suit will fall off and their true identity will be revealed. By then the Pentagon will be full of crab grass and it’ll be too late. The crab grass, or what we took to be crab grass, will dictate terms.
-Phillip K. Dick

Books won’t stay banned. They won’t burn. Ideas won’t go to jail. In the long run of history the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas.
-A. Whitney Griswold

Censorship is the tool of those who have the need to hide actualities from themselves and others. Their fear is only their inability to face what is real. Somewhere in their upbringing they were shielded against the total facts of our experience. They were only taught to look one way when many ways exist.
-Charles Bukowski

We all know that books burn, yet we have the greater knowledge that books cannot be killed by fire. People die, but books never die.
-Franklin D. Roosevelt

To limit the press is to insult a nation; to prohibit reading of certain books is to declare the inhabitants to be either fools or slaves.
-Claude-Adrien Helvetius

I heard someone tried the monkeys-on-typewriters bit trying for the plays of W. Shakespeare, but all they got was the collected works of Francis Bacon.
-Bill Hirst

Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.
-T.S. Eliot

There is no such thing as a moral book or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written. That is all.
-Oscar Wilde

…when you have eliminated the impossible, that which remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
-Arthur Conan Doyle, english author

Outside of a book, a dog is a man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read.
-Groucho Marx

Asimov’s 3 Laws of Alien Behavior: 1) Their survival will be more important than our survival. 2) Wimps don’t become top dogs. 3) They will assume that the first two laws apply to us.

May all your orifices be clogged with camel dung, your belly eternally full of vomit! May your tongue rot and your teeth fall out and your gums swell with boils! May your liver rot and your bladder dry up and your glands shrivel and putrefy!
-Tirla, Pegasus In Flight

Maybe this world is another planet’s hell.
- Aldous Huxley

Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
-Arthur C. Clarke

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be mowed down in the crossfire.”
-The Nanotech Chronicles by Michael Flynn

“He who will not reason, is a bigot; he who cannot, is a fool; and he who dares not, is a slave.”
-Byron

I do not want people to be agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them.
-Jane Austen

As we look on, out runs Pete with his 9mm. Pete is on the pistol team… Pete is mad…. Pete has a gun…. Run pete run….run far from us Pete.
-The Bastard User From Hell

No man is an Island, entire of it self; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were; any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.
-John Donne, Meditation XVII

A wizard cannot do everything; a fact most magicians are reticent to admit, let alone discuss with prospective clients. Still, the fact remains that there are certain objects, and people, that are, for one reason or another, completely immune to any direct magical spell. It is for this group of beings that the magician learns the subtleties of using indirect spells. It also does no harm, in dealing with these matters, to carry a large club near your person at all times.
-Craig Gardner (The Teachings of Ebenezum, Volume VIII)

I detest the man who hides one thing in the depths of his heart and speaks forth another.
-Homer

The opening Maizan position (absolute surrender) would be rejected as wholly unacceptable by the Sandeni, nor in all likelihood would the Maizan think much of the initial Sandeni response. (Go to hell, dog robbers!) For the week following, the trained and motivated professionals on both staffs would bustle back and forth, presenting appropriate position papers, trading on nuances, seeking out the slightest room to manuver, looking for someone to bribe, or better yet blackmail, angling all the while for for a resolution both sides might be able to live with. In the meanwhile, many intemperate and provocative remarks would be exchanged (off the record, thank you very much) by both sides regarding eachother’s ancestry and/or amorous proclivities.
Then a deal would be struck.
-Chris Clairmont and George Lucas, Shadow Moon

‘Rabbit’s clever,’ said Pooh thoughtfully.
‘Yes,’ said Piglet, ‘Rabbit’s clever.’
‘And he has Brain.’
‘Yes,’ said Piglet, ‘Rabbit has Brain.’
There was a long silence. ‘I suppose,’ said Pooh, ‘that that’s why he never understands anything.’
-The House at Pooh Corner

It is hard to be brave when you are a Very Small Animal.
-Piglet

Just because an animal is large, it doesn’t mean he doesn’t want kindness; however big Tigger seems to be, remember that he wants as much kindness as Roo.
-Pooh’s Little Instruction Book