Life - Quotes from Science Fiction

A lot of quotations carefully collected from a very big amount of books and divided by categories.

Have fun reading it, this is really interesting and breathtaking!

If he could get the hang of the thing his cry might become ''To live would be an awfully big adventure!'' but he can never quite get the hang of it, and so no one is as gay as he.

- J. M. Barrie, Peter Pan (play, 1904)

I didn't care what it was they talked about, so long as it connected with human life, somehow. There are few things that don't.

- Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Herland (1915)

They had no theory of the essential opposition of good and evil; life to them was Growth; their pleasure was in growing, and their duty also.

- Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Herland (1915)

''I think of Life!'' he roared. ''The dead are dead, and what has passed is done! I have a ship and a fighting crew and a girl with lips like wine, and that's all I ever asked. Lick your wounds, bullies, and break out a cask of ale. You're going to work ship as she never was worked before. Dance and sing while you buckle to it, damn you! To the devil with empty seas! We're bound for waters where the seaports are fat, and the merchant ships are crammed with plunder!''

- Robert E. Howard, ''The Pool of the Black One'' (1933)

We know now why all the galaxies in the cosmos are fleeing from our own, know that ours is held an accursed galaxy, leprous with the disease of life.

- Edmond Hamilton, ''The Accursed Galaxy'' (1935)

Nothing is important in life but the little bit of love and laughter and sunshine that we can have before we die.

- Edmond Hamilton, ''The Ephemerae'' (1938)

You see, George, you really had a wonderful life.

- Frances Goodrich, Albert Hackett, Frank Capra, and Jo Swerling, It's aWonderful Life (film, 1946)

Life could be as ugly as an open field latrine in midsummer.

- William Tenn, ''Child's Play'' (1947)

He looked uncertain and suspicious of life, like a man who finds a newlyhatched octopus in his breakfast orange juice.

- William Tenn, ''Child's Play'' (1947)

What did a man live for? All Dodge's instincts jostled and shoved forward to point to one answer: that in the last analysis a man lived to live.

- Jerome Bixby, ''Angels in the Jets'' (1952)

The realization of the Principle of Sufficient Irritation came to me. Here was the origin of life. Eons ago, in the remote past, a bit of inanimate matter had become so irritated by something that it crawled away, moved by indignation.

- Philip K. Dick, ''The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford'' (1954)

Everything in the universe has collapsed . . . shifting, random, purposeless gray smoke you can't put your hands on. The only thing that's left is people; your family, your friends, your mistress, your protector. You can touch them, be close to them . . . breathing life that's warm and solid. Perspiration, skin and hair, saliva, breath, bodies. Taste, touch, smell, colors. Good God, there has to be something you can grab hold of! What is there, beyond people?

- Philip K. Dick, Solar Lottery (1955)

It had just dawned on him, with the dazzling glow of revelation, that the whole course of anybody's life was determined by improbable accidents.

- Damon Knight, ''You're Another'' (1955)

What is life but organized energy?

- Arthur C. Clarke, ''Out of the Sun'' (1958)

Logically - for what had a more gloomy prognosis than life? - every morning one should say to one's friends: ''I grieve for your irrevocable death,'' as to anyone suffering from an incurable disease.

- J. G. Ballard, The Drowned World (1962)

''If you find your life tangled up with somebody else's life for no very logical reason,'' writes Bokonon, ''that person may be a member of your karass.''

- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Cat's Cradle (1963)

There is no perfect defense. There is no protection. Being alive means being exposed; it's the nature of life to be hazardous - it's the stuff of living.

- Philip K. Dick, Clans of the Alphane Moon (1964)

There's magic and enchantment in regular life, if you look at it right.

- Richard McKenna, ''The Secret Place'' (1966)

Live long, T'Pau, and prosper.

- Theodore Sturgeon, ''Amok Time,'' episode of Star Trek (1967)

Your life from birth to death resembles the progress of a hopeless drunk tightrope walker whose act has been so bad up till now that he's being bombarded with rotten eggs and broken bottles.

- John Brunner, Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

There are no small matters. Just as there is no small life. The life of an insect, a spider; his life is as large as yours, and yours is as large as mine. Life is life.

- Philip K. Dick, Galactic Pot-Healer (1969)

The Book made a pool ball out of me, an object set in motion, as in Aristotle's view of the world. One moving pool ball hits the next; it hits a third; that is the essence of life.

- Philip K. Dick, Galactic Pot-Healer (1969)

There's meaning everywhere, Harry. For Sam Smith as well as for Beethoven. For Noel Breckenridge as well as for Michelangelo. Dawn after dawn, simply being alive, being part of it all, part of the cosmic dance of life - that's the meaning, Harry.

- Robert Silverberg, ''Breckenridge and the Continuum'' (1973)

The garden of life never seems to confine itself to the plots philosophers have laid out for its convenience. Maybe a few more tractors would do the trick.

- Roger Zelazny, ''Home Is the Hangman'' (1975)

In the wastes of nonbeing it is born, flickers out, is born again and holds together, swells and spreads. In lifelessness it lives, against the gray tide of entropy it strives, improbably persists, gathering itself into ever richer complexities until it grows as a swelling wave. [. . .] Following it into being came its dark twin, its Adversary, the shadow which ceaselessly devours it from within. Pitilessly pursued, attacked in every vital, the living wave foams upward, its billion momentary crests blooming into the light above the pain and death that claims them. Over uncounted aeons the mortal substance strives, outreaches. Death-driven, it flees ever more swiftly before its Enemy until it runs, leaps, soars into flashing flight. [. . .] But it bears its Enemy within it, for Death is the power of its uprush.

- James Tiptree, Jr., ''SheWaits for All Men Born'' (1976)

Why should I want to make anything up? Life's bad enough as it is without wanting to invent any more of it.

- Douglas Adams, ''Fit the Fifth,'' episode of The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy (radio series, 1978)

She had to face life. Even if all life had to show her was a locked door, and behind the locked door, no room.

- Ursula K. Le Guin, ''The Eye of the Heron'' (1978)

There are so many things we can't do, any of us, for whatever the reasons - time, talent, life's callous whims.We're all on a one-way trip into infinity.

- Joan D. Vinge, ''View from a Height'' (1978)

''Life,'' said Marvin dolefully, ''loathe it or ignore it, you can't like it.''

- Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979)

Life is wasted on the living.

- Douglas Adams, ''Fit the Ninth,'' episode of The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy (radio series, 1980)

One definition of life, albeit not a particularly useful one, might run something like this: ''Life is that property which a being will lose as a result of falling out of a cold and mysterious cave thirteen miles above ground level.''

- Douglas Adams, ''Fit the Tenth,'' episode of The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy (radio series, 1980)

We're all trying to fulfill ourselves, understand ourselves, get in touch with ourselves, face the reality of ourselves, explore ourselves, expand ourselves. Ever since we dispensed with God, we've got nothing but our selves to explain this meaningless horror of life.

- Paddy Chayefsky, Altered States (film, 1980)

Most of what matters in our lives takes place in our absence.

- Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children (1980)

Life is just a process of picking up scars and experience.

- Michael Swanwick, ''Ginungagap'' (1980)

He hadn't realized that life speaks with a voice to you, a voice that brings you answers to the questions you continually ask of it, had never consciously detected it or recognized its tones until it now said something it had never said to him before, which was ''yes.''

- Douglas Adams, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish (1985)

Nothing gives life more zest than running for your life.

- Robert A. Heinlein, The Cat WhoWalks throughWalls (1985)

If you haven't got a past to fall back on then you haven't got a real life at all.

- George Turner, Drowning Towers (1987)

He had learned the sorcery of woven things from his mother, learned of spiders and caterpillars, of nesting birds, of twining snakes, of thread and cloth. And then he had moved beyond that knowledge, to perceive the structure of living things, to recognize that they, too, were patterned, but on some level deeper than the surface, deeper than the human eye could see. Life itself was woven of a multitude of twisting strands, of interlocking pieces, as surely as a tapestry, as surely as a suit of chain mail.

- Phyllis Eisenstein, The Crystal Palace (1988)

The culture of the river kingdom had a lot to say about death and what happened afterwards. In fact it had very little to say about life, regarding it as a sort of inconvenient prelude to the main event and something to be hurried through as politely as possible.

- Terry Pratchett, Pyramids (1989)

One of the extraordinary things about life is the sort of places it's prepared to put up with living. Anywhere it can get some kind of a grip, whether it's the intoxicating seas of Santraginus V, where the fish never seem to care whatever the heck kind of direction they swim in, the fire storms of Frastra, where, they say, life begins at 40,000 degrees, or just burrowing around in the lower intestine of a rat for the sheer unadulterated hell of it, life will always find a way of hanging on in somewhere. It will even live in New York, though it's hard to know why.

- Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless (1992)

Sometimes life seems like a kind of game to me. John shook his head. In games there are rules, but in life the rules keep changing. You could put your bishop out there to mate the other guy's king, and he could lean down and whisper in your bishop's ear, and suddenly it's playing for him, and moving like a rook. And you're fucked.

- Kim Stanley Robinson, Red Mars (1992)

All life feeds on destruction and death.

- Paul J. McAuley, ''Recording Angel'' (1995)

I'm not Chinese. I thrive in interesting times.

- Charles De Lint, Someplace to Be Flying (1998)

Here was my life, a mess with a few good things. Now how do I pull out the good things and step away from the mess?

- Rebecca Ore, ''Half in Love with Easeful Rock and Roll'' (1998)

Sheridan: What does the candle represent? Delenn: Life. Sheridan: Whose life? Delenn: All life, every life.We're all born as molecules in the hearts of a billion stars, molecules that do not understand politics, policies, and differences. In a billion years we, foolish molecules, forget who we are and where we came from. Desperate acts of ego.We give ourselves names, fight over lines on maps. And pretend our light is better than everyone else's. The flame reminds us of the piece of those stars that live inside us. A spark that tells us: you should know better. The flame also reminds us that life is precious, as each flame is unique.When it goes out, it's gone forever. And there will never be another quite like it. So many candles will go out tonight.

- J. Michael Straczynski, ''And All My Dreams, Torn Asunder,'' episode of Babylon 5 (1998)