“I am the Little Bug Spirit. I come to people when they begin to take themselves too seriously. They think they are big. I cut them down to size." This angered me. I tried to speak, but I couldn't get my thoughts together. The person went on, “I am the stone under your foot. I am the bug that bites you in the ass. I am the fart that comes when you are introduced to the important visiting professor. I am menstrual cramps and diarrhea." I kept getting angrier. “My tools are lies and tricks, misunderstandings and accidents. Everything stupid and undignified happens because of me. Hola! I am something!”
― quote from A Woman of the Iron People
“I am the Little Bug Spirit. I come to people when they begin to take themselves too seriously. They think they are big. I cut them down to size.”
― quote from A Woman of the Iron People
“Knowledge—by itself—is an intervention. Our presence changes the way the natives see the world. According to her, there is no way to study these people without causing change." “The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle,”
― quote from A Woman of the Iron People
“What had they been thinking of, those people then? They had left their descendants almost no water and great mountains of uranium. What kind of inheritance was that? How did they think we were going to survive?”
― quote from A Woman of the Iron People
“It's a typical Western bias. You think a tool is more important than a dream because a tool can be measured and a dream cannot.”
― quote from A Woman of the Iron People
“The cruellest thing you can do to Kerouac is reread him at thirty-eight.”
― Hanif Kureishi, quote from The Buddha of Suburbia
“A pattern of raised crisscrossed scars, some old and white, others more recent in various shades of pink and red. Exposing the stress of the structure underneath its paint”
― Amy Efaw, quote from After
“No! It isn't fair! Rachel is EVERYONE'S type! I mean, she's attractive and athletic and well put together and successful and went to Yale and is making a difference in the world. What about ME? What about nice girls like me, who are just...well, nice? What about the nice girls? How are we supposed to compete with all of these competent, athletic, shower-taking girls, with their diplomas and their Palm Pilots and their teeny tiny butts?”
― Meg Cabot, quote from Size 12 Is Not Fat
“Ah, I thought, feeling the first brush of tingling warmth as we fell into the unknown. Magic.”
― Alexandra Bracken, quote from Brightly Woven
“He hesitated, then arranged the gold medallion of the Cetagandan Order of Merit on its colorful ribbon, properly, around the tunic’s high collar. It was cool and heavy under his hand. He could be one of the few soldiers in history ever to be decorated by both sides in the same war . . . though to be truthful, the Order of Merit had come later, and actually had been presented to Lord Vorkosigan, not the little Admiral for a change. When they were all arranged, the effect was just short of loony. Separated into all the little secret compartments, he hadn’t realized just how much he’d accumulated, till he put it all together again. No, not again. For the first time. Let’s lay it all on the line. Smiling grimly, he fastened them down. He donned the white silk shirt that went underneath, the silver-embroidered suspenders, the brown trousers with the silver side-piping, the gleaming riding boots. Lastly, the heavy tunic. He fastened his grandfather’s dagger in its cloisonné sheath, with the Vorkosigan seal in the jeweled hilt, on its proper belt around his waist. He combed his hair, and stepped back to regard himself, glittering in his mirror. Going native, are we? The sarcastic voice was growing fainter. “If you expect to open a can of worms,” he spoke aloud for the first time, “you’d best trouble to pack a can-opener.” *”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, quote from Memory
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