“One tribe moves out and one tribe stays. History broadens, and philosophy shifts, develops a rift, splits one population from the other . . . and a schism happens, minor or major. It’s the way humankind has always proliferated. We go over the next hill, live a few hundred years, change our languages to accommodate things we never saw before—and before we know it, our cousins think we have an accent. Or we think they have a strange attitude. And we don’t really understand our cousins any longer.”
― C.J. Cherryh, quote from Downbelow Station
“What the visual media could not carry into living rooms, the general public could not long remain exercised about.
Statistically, a majority of the electorate could not or did not read complicated issues;
no pictures, no news; no news, no event; no great sympathy on the part of the public nor sustained interest from the media: safe politics for the Company.”
― C.J. Cherryh, quote from Downbelow Station
“A bizarre hysteria, perhaps, that point which many reached here, when anger was all that mattered. It led to self-destruction.”
― C.J. Cherryh, quote from Downbelow Station
“Their minds were geared to the old problems and to their own problems and their own politics.”
― C.J. Cherryh, quote from Downbelow Station
“It was a scientific success, bringing back data enough to keep the analysts busy for years… but there was no glib, slick way to explain the full meaning of its observations in layman’s terms. In public relations the mission was a failure; the public, seeking to understand on their own terms, looked for material benefit, treasure, riches, dramatic findings.”
― C.J. Cherryh, quote from Downbelow Station
“Quentin found it hard not to blame her doctors, and especially her father, for not being open-minded enough to at least consider the possibility that there had been nothing wrong with Diana from the beginning. But they hadn't. Faced with the inexplicable, with experiences and behaviors they didn't understand and were frightened by, they had acted swiftly, with all the supposed knowledge of modern-day medicine, to "fix" her "problems."
Even before she hit puberty, for Christ's sake.
And they had left her only half alive. A pale, colorless, vague, and passionless copy of the Diana she was meant to be.
Christ, no wonder she looked out on the world with wary, suspicious eyes. Finally off all the mind-numbing medications, Diana was clearheaded for the first time since childhood. Truly aware for the first time of the world around her. And not just aware, but painfully alert, with the raw-nerved sensitivity of most psychics.
She knew, now. No matter what she was willing to admit aloud or even consciously, she knew now that she had been kept half alive, less than that. Knew that those she had trusted most had betrayed that trust, even if they had done it in the name of love and concern and with all good intentions. They hadn't kept her safe, they had kept her doped up and compliant. They had sought to hammer away all the sharp, unique edges that made her Diana.
So she could be healthy. Like everybody else.
It had been in her voice when she'd told him, a haunted awareness of all she'd lost.
"I'm thirty-three now. You do the math."
He thought it must have been like waking from a coma or a hazy dream to find that everything that had gone before had not been real. The world had turned, time had moved on... and Diana had lost years.
Years.”
― Kay Hooper, quote from Chill of Fear
“A dancer on break approached him. She smiled. Each tooth was angled in a different direction, as if her mouth were the masterwork of a mad orthodontist.
"Hi," she said.
"Hi."
"You're really cute."
"I don't have any money."
She spun and walked away. Ah, romance.”
― Harlan Coben, quote from Deal Breaker
“Come to think of it, she did not speak a word. Yet I could have sworn she had the most beautiful voice.”
― Julie Klassen, quote from The Silent Governess
“Life isn't fair. Why should death be any different?”
― Gina Damico, quote from Croak
“The mystery of other individuals, señor caballero, is ordinarily grief we neither share nor understand.”
― Carlos Fuentes, quote from Terra Nostra
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