“Why can't you like me?" he said, his voice breaking. His scent steamed then, hot and heady with a welter of contradictions: apples and fire and electric roil of those cold, black shadows. "Why can't you like me just a little?"
She would never know how she might have answered, because he never gave her the chance.
Instead, he kissed her.”
― Ilsa J. Bick, quote from Ashes
“It was that stages-of-anger thing. I was shocked and then I got pissed and then I fought like hell … and then I went numb. They called it acceptance, but it wasn’t. It’s what happens when you have only two choices: live with the monster, or kill yourself.”
― Ilsa J. Bick, quote from Ashes
“But sticking to rules just because they're there does not make them right. You need to learn when the rules should be broken.”
― Ilsa J. Bick, quote from Ashes
“Obeying orders just to obey is the mark of a person who has ceased to think. Remember, it is better to suffer for doing what is right rather than for doing what is wrong.”
― Ilsa J. Bick, quote from Ashes
“Sometimes you don't know what you need until it's gone”
― Ilsa J. Bick, quote from Ashes
“Run, she told herself. Run, you idiot, run.
But she didn't. She couldn't. She just... couldn't.”
― Ilsa J. Bick, quote from Ashes
“Those brain-zapped kids weren’t the only - or maybe even the worst - enemy.”
― Ilsa J. Bick, quote from Ashes
“My English teacher said that a writer is the worst judge of his own work.”
― Ilsa J. Bick, quote from Ashes
“As the dog sprinted back, Jack said to the girl, "Sweetheart,honey, why do you have to be so hateful?"
"Why not?" Ellie said. "It's not like being good ever got me anywhere.”
― Ilsa J. Bick, quote from Ashes
“As a doc, though, I've seen what happens when people are under a lot of stress. Doesn't always bring out their best. When people are scared, they get angry. They'll do things they never thought they would. They'll bargain and compromise in order to survive; they'll chase after miracle cures and believe just about anything so long as it gives them hope. When hope fails, then watch out. Some people get brutal. They'll turn on each other; they'll become their own worst enemies.”
― Ilsa J. Bick, quote from Ashes
“Raccoon." She saw Ellie put a hand to her mouth to cover the giggles and then looked back at Tom. "Like, you caught it?"
"Well, it sure didn't get Fed-Exed [...]”
― Ilsa J. Bick, quote from Ashes
“Sometimes when you're sad, it's easier to be angry.”
― Ilsa J. Bick, quote from Ashes
“Obeying orders just to obey is the mark of a person who has ceased to think.”
― Ilsa J. Bick, quote from Ashes
“You want to brawl. You want to fight. Fighting tricks you into believing you can change the past, even when the past is dead and gone and all of it ashes.”
― Ilsa J. Bick, quote from Ashes
“A chronic headache muttered in her temples, but like Barrett said, no one ever died from pain. True, but some days you didn't much enjoy living either.”
― Ilsa J. Bick, quote from Ashes
“How come adults got away with saying things that would sound rude coming out of her mouth?”
― Ilsa J. Bick, quote from Ashes
“Fighting tricks you into believing you can change the past, even when the past is dead and gone and all of it ashes.”
― Ilsa J. Bick, quote from Ashes
“As long as you're alive, there is hope...Hope is saying that I will live one more day, and that is a blessing, too.”
― Ilsa J. Bick, quote from Ashes
Ilsa J. Bick
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“At only twenty-eight I felt no great rush to settle into anything boring.”
― Kylie Chan, quote from White Tiger
“Worldwide Long Range Solutions Special Interest Group [ ¤ SIG AeR.WLRS 253787890.546]. Space Colonization Subgroup. Open discussion board.
Okay, so imagine we get past the next few rough decades and finally do what we should have back in TwenCen. Say we mine asteroids for platinum, discover the secrets of true nanotechnology, and set Von Neumann "sheep" grazing on the moon to produce boundless wealth. To listen to some of the rest of you, all our problems would then be over. The next step, star travel, and colonization of the galaxy, would be trivial.
But hold on! Even assuming we solve how to maintain long-lasting ecologies in space and get so wealthy the costs of star-flight aren't crippling, you've still got the problem of time.
I mean, most hypothetical designs show likely starships creeping along at no more than ten percent of the speed of light, a whole lot slower than those sci-fi cruisers we see zipping on three-vee. At such speeds it may take five, ten generations to reach a good colony site. Meanwhile, passengers will have to maintain villages and farms and cranky, claustrophobic grandkids, all inside their hollowed-out, spinning worldlets.
What kind of social engineering will that take? Do you know how to design a closed society that'd last so long without flying apart? Oh, I think it can be done. But don't pretend it'll be simple!
Nor will be solving the dilemma of gene pool isolation. In the arks and zoos right now, a lot of rescued species are dying off even though the microecologies are right, simply because too few individuals were included in the original mix. For a healthy gene pool you need diversity, variety, heterozygosity.
One thing's clear, no starship will make it carrying only one racial group. What'll be needed, frankly, are mongrels… people who've bred back and forth with just about everybody and seem to enjoy it.”
― David Brin, quote from Earth
“A bard must know history so she does not repeat it. She tells the tales but is never part of them. She watches but remains above what she sees. She inspires passions in others and rules her own.”
― David Gaider, quote from The Stolen Throne
“She gets my need to fix things that have broken along the way, to mend fences. Maybe if we all just tried to put the pieces back together as soon as they fell out of place, the puzzles in our lives would feel more like an accomplishment than a chore.”
― Megan Bostic, quote from Never Eighteen
“You better call me the second he steps off that elevator.”
― Victoria Michaels, quote from Trust in Advertising
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