John Varley Quotes (23 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

Works

The Ophiuchi Hotline

John Varley

The Barbie Murders

John Varley

The Pusher

John Varley

John Varley: 23 quotes 0 likes

Famous John Varley Quotes

“I didn't become rich, but I was usually comfortable. That is a social disease, the symptom of which is the ability to ignore it while your society develops weeping pustules and has its brains eaten out by radioactive maggots.”

John Varley

"The Persistence of Vision"

“You've got to watch yourself when you get as old as I am. You have to try new things, sometimes for no better reason than that they’re new. Otherwise you rust.”

John Varley book The Ophiuchi Hotline

Source: The Ophiuchi Hotline (1977), Chapter 18 (p. 170)

“They understood the basic principles of morals: that nothing is moral always, and anything is moral under the right circumstances.”

John Varley

"The Persistence of Vision", The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (March 1978), reprinted as the title story in The Persistence of Vision (1978)

“This was a killer. Quite possibly a soldier, though Lilo was not expert in mental diseases.”

John Varley book The Ophiuchi Hotline

Source: The Ophiuchi Hotline (1977), Chapter 2 (p. 23)

“Just because Beethoven doesn’t sound like currently popular art doesn’t mean his music is worthless.”

John Varley

"The Phantom of Kansas" (1976), The World Treasury of Science Fiction (ed. David Hartwell), p. 375

“She looked at me askance. “Of course I bribed him, Victor. You’d be amazed to know how cheaply. Does that bother you?”
“Yes,” I admitted. “I don’t like bribery.”
“I’m indifferent to it. It happens, like gravity. It may not be admirable, but it gets things done.””

John Varley

"Press Enter"

John Varley Quotes about the world

“There were worlds in the jewel. There was ancient Barsoom of my childhood fairy tales; there was Middle Earth with brooding castles and sentient forests. The jewel was a window on something unimaginable, a place where there were no questions and no emotions but a vast awareness.”

John Varley

"In the Bowl", The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (December 1975), reprinted in The Persistence of Vision (1978)

“Buildings were just the world's furniture, and he didn't care how it was arranged.”

John Varley book The Pusher

"The Pusher", The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (October 1981), reprinted in The John Varley Reader (2005)

“What they had going certainly came as near as anyone ever has in this imperfect world to a sane, rational way for people to exist without warfare and with a minimum of politics. In the end, those two old dinosaurs are the only ways humans have yet discovered to be social animals. Yes, I do see war as a way of living with one another; by imposing your will on another in terms so unmistakable that the opponent has to either knuckle under to you, die, or beat your brains out. And if that’s a solution to anything, I'd rather live without solutions. Politics is not much better. The only thing going for it is that it occasionally succeeds in substituting talk for fists.”

John Varley

"The Persistence of Vision"

“She was a reader; there were many citizens who were not. The prevailing social explanation for illiteracy was that there were people who were temperamentally unsuited for reading—and indeed there were few callings in a computerized, video-saturated world that required literacy. Lilo accepted that, but had always had a feeling that most people never learned to read because they simply were not smart enough.”

John Varley book The Ophiuchi Hotline

Source: The Ophiuchi Hotline (1977), Chapter 5 (p. 49)

“Religion and science don’t mix well, as science likes to observe and draw conclusions—to learn, in other words—and religion cares only about learning the Bible, the Torah, the Koran, etc. They don’t need to learn about this world, because they already know. A good way to describe a wasted life, as far as I’m concerned. Religious people already know things, with no more proof than some words in an old book. In short, they’re crazy.”

John Varley

Interview at Republibot.com http://www.republibot.com/content/interview-john-varley (February 24, 2009)

John Varley Quotes

“I had kept a straight face under worse provocation, so I trust I did well enough then.”

John Varley

"Press Enter", Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine (May 1984)

“It was not pleasant to admit what one is willing to do to go on living.”

John Varley book The Ophiuchi Hotline

Source: The Ophiuchi Hotline (1977), Chapter 14 (p. 141)

“She was already putting her distance between herself and this woman she would kill. She was becoming an object, something she was going to do something unpleasant to; not a person with a right to live.”

John Varley

"Equinoctial" (1977), The Arbor House Treasury of Great Science Fiction Short Novels, p. 84

Personality

“It’s unpleasant to find that what you had thought of as moral scruples suddenly seem not quite so important in the face of a stack of money.”

John Varley

"In the Bowl" (1975), Nebula Winners Twelve, p. 91

Money

“I found that it is much more pleasurable to read adventures than to live them.”

John Varley book The Ophiuchi Hotline

Source: The Ophiuchi Hotline (1977), Chapter 23 (p. 210)

Pleasure , Reading

“Why is it that once having decided what I must do, I'm afraid to reexamine my decision? Maybe because the original decision cost me so much that I didn’t want to go through it again.”

John Varley

"The Persistence of Vision"

Decision

“"Picnic on Nearside", The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (August 1974), reprinted in Peter Crowther ed. Tales in Space, p. 283”

John Varley

Science

“We’ve become a race of engineers. What we never seem to understand is that after it’s time to railroad, there’s time to build a beautiful railroad. The state of the art has advanced enough; we can afford to pay a small penalty in efficiency.”

John Varley book The Ophiuchi Hotline

Source: The Ophiuchi Hotline (1977), Chapter 17 (p. 167)

Penalty , Beauty , Art , Understanding

“I thought his lack of curiosity must be monumental, but I was wrong. It turned out that he had some queer notions about the morality of the whole process, ideas he had gotten from some weirdly aberrant religion in his childhood. I had heard of the cult, as you can hardly avoid it if you know any history. It had said little about ethics, being more interested in arbitrary regulations.”

John Varley book The Barbie Murders

"Picnic on Nearside", in Peter Crowther ed. Tales in Space, p. 286

Religion , History , Idea , Childhood

“But now she was fifty-seven, and suddenly ancient. Soon she would be dead. Dead. You can’t get any more ancient than that.”

John Varley book The Ophiuchi Hotline

Source: The Ophiuchi Hotline (1977), Chapter 1 (p. 4)

Dead

“If only she could convince them, perhaps she could convince herself.”

John Varley book The Ophiuchi Hotline

Source: The Ophiuchi Hotline (1977), Chapter 10 (p. 89)

“I’m decrepit, but I ain’t senile.”

John Varley book The Barbie Murders

"Picnic on Nearside", The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (August 1974), reprinted in Peter Crowther ed. Tales in Space, p. 283

Similar authors

Robert A. Heinlein 557

American science fiction author

Isaac Asimov 303

American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston Uni…

Carl Sagan 365

American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science ed…

Arthur C. Clarke 207

British science fiction writer, science writer, inventor, u…

Stephen King 733

American author

L. Ron Hubbard 85

American science fiction author, philosopher, cult leader, …

Ray Bradbury 401

American writer

Jack London 77

American author, journalist, and social activist

Frank Herbert 158

American writer

H.P. Lovecraft 203

American author

Similar authors

Robert A. Heinlein 557

American science fiction author

Isaac Asimov 303

American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston Uni…

Carl Sagan 365

American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science ed…

Arthur C. Clarke 207

British science fiction writer, science writer, inventor, u…

Stephen King 733

American author