Questions and answers - 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!

Your mind will answer most questions if you learn to relax and wait for the answer.

- William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch (1959)

Why was he there, what failure was he trying to expiate? And why choose Cocoa Beach as his penitential shore? For three years he had asked himself these questions so often that they had ceased to have any meaning, like a fossilised catechism or the blunted self-recrimination of a paranoic [sic].

- J. G. Ballard, ''The Cage of Sand'' (1962)

Prof was interested in questions rather than answers, which baffled her.

- Robert A. Heinlein, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress (1966)

questions are a burden to others answers a prison for oneself - George Markstein and David Tomblin, ''Arrival,'' episode of The Prisoner (1968) I have something in my head that just won't quit. It's a way I have of asking the next question: why is so-and-so the way it is? Why can't it be such-andsuch instead? There is always another question to be asked about anything or any situation - especially you shouldn't quit when you like an answer because there's always another one after it. And we live in a world where people just don't want to ask the next question!

- Theodore Sturgeon, ''Slow Sculpture'' (1970)

That's one of those meaningless and unanswerable questions the mind keeps returning to endlessly, like the tongue exploring a broken tooth.

- Arthur C. Clarke, ''Transit of Earth'' (1971)

''Knowledge is what man is all about. [. . .] Man needs to know.'' ''Maybe,'' Sanders said, ''But is that the only thing man needs? I don't think so. I think he also needs mystery, and poetry, and romance. I think he needs a few unanswered questions, to make him brood and wonder.''

- George R. R. Martin, ''With Morning Comes Mistfall'' (1973)

They argued because they liked argument, liked the swift run of the unfettered mind along the paths of possibility, liked to question what was not questioned.

- Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia (1974)

Do not on any account give the same answer tomorrow as you give today.

- John Brunner, The Shockwave Rider (1975)

Her dance addressed reality, gave successive expression to the Three Eternal Questions asked by every human being who ever lived. Her dance observed her self, and asked, ''How have I come to be here?'' Her dance observed the universe in which self existed, and asked, ''How did all this come to be herewith me?'' And at last, observing her self in relation to its universe, ''Why am I so alone?'' [. . .] The dance ended, leaving her three questions unanswered, the tension of their asking unresolved.

- Spider Robinson and Jeanne Robinson, ''Stardance'' (1977)

Often the simple answers are the hardest to find.

- Poul Anderson, ''The Saturn Game'' (1981)

Why, he wondered, did so many people spend their lives not trying to find answers to questions - not even thinking of questions to begin with? Was there anything more exciting in life than seeking answers?

- Isaac Asimov, Prelude to Foundation (1988)

Todd used to say that we never ask ourselves questions we can't answer. ''You don't have to know the answer,'' he had said patiently, ''but you have to know the question is answerable. You can't even ask about things you know nothing of. And most of the time, you already know the answer. You just have to reorganize your knowledge to make it accessible. Asking a good question attests to a tremendous amount of knowledge.''

- KateWilhelm, ''Isosceles'' (1988)

Asking questions was the key to people's souls, infinitely more useful than wit.

- Kim Stanley Robinson, Red Mars (1992)

Why try to turn everything into a big mystery? If you go around asking questions the whole time you'll never get anything done.

- Terry Pratchett, The Last Continent (1998)

Without outside stimulation it was hard to break free of his own assumptions. One mind can think only of its own questions; it rarely surprises itself.

- Orson Scott Card, Ender's Shadow (1999)