Kage Baker Quotes

“I thought certain you’d like them Gnostic Gospels.”

Source: The Machine's Child (2006), Chapter 18, “In the Dark Night of the Soul (Year Indeterminate)” (pp. 173-174)
Context: Now then, Nick, wilt thou not sleep?
Nicholas glanced up from the plaquette on which he had been studying the Pali canon of Buddha’s teachings. He sighed and set it aside...
You don’t look like revelation has struck you, somehow.
No, Spirit.
This ain’t any better than the Tao?
No.
Nor the Bhagavad Gita? Nor the Avesta, neither?
No.
I thought certain you’d like them Gnostic Gospels.
Nicholas shrugged.
And I reckon you ain’t even looked at that nice book on Vodou.
Spirit, this is futility. What do the best of them but recapitulate the Ten Commandments, in one form or another? And I find no proof that men have obeyed strange gods any better than the God of the Israelites, or learned any more of the true nature of the Almighty. Shall I worship a cow? Shall I spin paper prayers on a wheel? I’d as lief go back to eating fish in Lent lest God smite me down, or pray to wooden Mary to take away the toothache.
Well, son, allowing for the foolishness, which I reckon depends on what port you hail from—ain’t there any one seems better than the rest?
None, Spirit. That I must be kind and do no harm, I needed no prophets to tell me; but not one will open his dead mouth to say what kind and harmless Lord would create this dreadful world, said Nicholas...
What do I tell my boy, then, if he gets the shakes about eternal life?
Set up no gods for thine Alec, Spirit. Nicholas lay back and put his arms about Mendoza, pulling her close. There is love, or there is nothing. The rest is vanity.

“Nor the Bhagavad Gita? Nor the Avesta, neither?”

Source: The Machine's Child (2006), Chapter 18, “In the Dark Night of the Soul (Year Indeterminate)” (pp. 173-174)
Context: Now then, Nick, wilt thou not sleep?
Nicholas glanced up from the plaquette on which he had been studying the Pali canon of Buddha’s teachings. He sighed and set it aside...
You don’t look like revelation has struck you, somehow.
No, Spirit.
This ain’t any better than the Tao?
No.
Nor the Bhagavad Gita? Nor the Avesta, neither?
No.
I thought certain you’d like them Gnostic Gospels.
Nicholas shrugged.
And I reckon you ain’t even looked at that nice book on Vodou.
Spirit, this is futility. What do the best of them but recapitulate the Ten Commandments, in one form or another? And I find no proof that men have obeyed strange gods any better than the God of the Israelites, or learned any more of the true nature of the Almighty. Shall I worship a cow? Shall I spin paper prayers on a wheel? I’d as lief go back to eating fish in Lent lest God smite me down, or pray to wooden Mary to take away the toothache.
Well, son, allowing for the foolishness, which I reckon depends on what port you hail from—ain’t there any one seems better than the rest?
None, Spirit. That I must be kind and do no harm, I needed no prophets to tell me; but not one will open his dead mouth to say what kind and harmless Lord would create this dreadful world, said Nicholas...
What do I tell my boy, then, if he gets the shakes about eternal life?
Set up no gods for thine Alec, Spirit. Nicholas lay back and put his arms about Mendoza, pulling her close. There is love, or there is nothing. The rest is vanity.

“Now then, Nick, wilt thou not sleep?”

Source: The Machine's Child (2006), Chapter 18, “In the Dark Night of the Soul (Year Indeterminate)” (pp. 173-174)
Context: Now then, Nick, wilt thou not sleep?
Nicholas glanced up from the plaquette on which he had been studying the Pali canon of Buddha’s teachings. He sighed and set it aside...
You don’t look like revelation has struck you, somehow.
No, Spirit.
This ain’t any better than the Tao?
No.
Nor the Bhagavad Gita? Nor the Avesta, neither?
No.
I thought certain you’d like them Gnostic Gospels.
Nicholas shrugged.
And I reckon you ain’t even looked at that nice book on Vodou.
Spirit, this is futility. What do the best of them but recapitulate the Ten Commandments, in one form or another? And I find no proof that men have obeyed strange gods any better than the God of the Israelites, or learned any more of the true nature of the Almighty. Shall I worship a cow? Shall I spin paper prayers on a wheel? I’d as lief go back to eating fish in Lent lest God smite me down, or pray to wooden Mary to take away the toothache.
Well, son, allowing for the foolishness, which I reckon depends on what port you hail from—ain’t there any one seems better than the rest?
None, Spirit. That I must be kind and do no harm, I needed no prophets to tell me; but not one will open his dead mouth to say what kind and harmless Lord would create this dreadful world, said Nicholas...
What do I tell my boy, then, if he gets the shakes about eternal life?
Set up no gods for thine Alec, Spirit. Nicholas lay back and put his arms about Mendoza, pulling her close. There is love, or there is nothing. The rest is vanity.

“And I reckon you ain’t even looked at that nice book on Vodou.”

Source: The Machine's Child (2006), Chapter 18, “In the Dark Night of the Soul (Year Indeterminate)” (pp. 173-174)
Context: Now then, Nick, wilt thou not sleep?
Nicholas glanced up from the plaquette on which he had been studying the Pali canon of Buddha’s teachings. He sighed and set it aside...
You don’t look like revelation has struck you, somehow.
No, Spirit.
This ain’t any better than the Tao?
No.
Nor the Bhagavad Gita? Nor the Avesta, neither?
No.
I thought certain you’d like them Gnostic Gospels.
Nicholas shrugged.
And I reckon you ain’t even looked at that nice book on Vodou.
Spirit, this is futility. What do the best of them but recapitulate the Ten Commandments, in one form or another? And I find no proof that men have obeyed strange gods any better than the God of the Israelites, or learned any more of the true nature of the Almighty. Shall I worship a cow? Shall I spin paper prayers on a wheel? I’d as lief go back to eating fish in Lent lest God smite me down, or pray to wooden Mary to take away the toothache.
Well, son, allowing for the foolishness, which I reckon depends on what port you hail from—ain’t there any one seems better than the rest?
None, Spirit. That I must be kind and do no harm, I needed no prophets to tell me; but not one will open his dead mouth to say what kind and harmless Lord would create this dreadful world, said Nicholas...
What do I tell my boy, then, if he gets the shakes about eternal life?
Set up no gods for thine Alec, Spirit. Nicholas lay back and put his arms about Mendoza, pulling her close. There is love, or there is nothing. The rest is vanity.

““Why should we obey you?” Budu asked.
“Because I’m, er, omnipotent,” said Alec.”

Source: The Machine's Child (2006), Chapter 18, “In the Dark Night of the Soul (Year Indeterminate)” (pp. 173-174)
Context: Now then, Nick, wilt thou not sleep?
Nicholas glanced up from the plaquette on which he had been studying the Pali canon of Buddha’s teachings. He sighed and set it aside...
You don’t look like revelation has struck you, somehow.
No, Spirit.
This ain’t any better than the Tao?
No.
Nor the Bhagavad Gita? Nor the Avesta, neither?
No.
I thought certain you’d like them Gnostic Gospels.
Nicholas shrugged.
And I reckon you ain’t even looked at that nice book on Vodou.
Spirit, this is futility. What do the best of them but recapitulate the Ten Commandments, in one form or another? And I find no proof that men have obeyed strange gods any better than the God of the Israelites, or learned any more of the true nature of the Almighty. Shall I worship a cow? Shall I spin paper prayers on a wheel? I’d as lief go back to eating fish in Lent lest God smite me down, or pray to wooden Mary to take away the toothache.
Well, son, allowing for the foolishness, which I reckon depends on what port you hail from—ain’t there any one seems better than the rest?
None, Spirit. That I must be kind and do no harm, I needed no prophets to tell me; but not one will open his dead mouth to say what kind and harmless Lord would create this dreadful world, said Nicholas...
What do I tell my boy, then, if he gets the shakes about eternal life?
Set up no gods for thine Alec, Spirit. Nicholas lay back and put his arms about Mendoza, pulling her close. There is love, or there is nothing. The rest is vanity.

“How could millennia-old superbeings be so boring?”

Source: The Sons of Heaven (2007), Chapter 35, Section 1 “The Silence at Last” (p. 415)

““That wasn’t very godly,” Alec calls up to him.
“And what has God to do with me?” Nicholas shouts back. “No voices speak to me out of any burning bush. No word at all. Hideous vacancy, monstrous indifference, and a senseless universe!”
“Well,” says Alec cautiously, “I would think that was a good thing. Shouldn’t you have grown out of this by now? What do you want meaning in the universe for, anyway? Nothing means anything! We’re just here to go along for the adventure.””

Source: In the Garden of Iden (1997), Chapter 18 (p. 213)

““How, in this day and age, can any one of you claim to be better than your fellow human beings?”
“Because we are,” said Marilyn Deighton-True with a shrug. “Face reality, Giles, or it will face you. You can spout all the socialiste nouveau crap you like, but it simply doesn’t apply to a meritocracy.””

Source: The Sons of Heaven (2007), Chapter 23, Section 1 “Child Care in the Cyborg Family, Volume Ten: The Awkward Years” (pp. 274-275)

““This is insane,” she said. “Why would mortals make it so difficult to get two little glasses of white wine?”
“Human nature, my love.” Edward grinned and set his knee against hers under the tablecloth. “The desire of a few to dictate morality to the whole. And why do the masses submit willingly? Apathy. Or, perhaps, the opportunity to experience the thrill of the forbidden!””

Source: The Life of the World to Come (2004), Chapter 6, “Alec and His Friends” (p. 106)

“The leaf that spreads in the sunlight is the only holiness there is. I haven’t found holiness in the faiths of mortals, nor in their music, nor in their dreams: it’s out in the open field, with the green rows looking at the sky. I don’t know what it is, this holiness: but it’s there, and it looks at the sky.”

Source: The Machine's Child (2006), Chapter 21, “Santa Catalina Island, 1923 AD” (p. 212; during Prohibition)

““Isn’t that a little hard on him? You’re not only making him feel bad about something he didn’t do, you’re making him feel bad about something that didn’t even shracking happen.”
“I believe churches used to call it original sin,” Rutherford agreed, looking crafty. “But what does it matter, if it serves to make him a better man?””

Source: In the Garden of Iden (1997), Chapter 5 (p. 46)

“Do you remember that terrible moment, señors, when the self-righteousness of your youth died? When all the stern warnings of your elders, ignored until the consequences abruptly came crashing down on your head, made you see in a flash that the warnings hadn’t been unfair or mean-spirited or blind, they’d been right? All along your elders had been trying to tell you about the black joke that is life, trying to help you and save you from pain. But you insisted on running straight into the trap, mocking them as you ran, to the agony that was irreversible and permanent, with no one to blame, finally, but yourself.
It’s not good to see yourself in the mirror then.”

Source: The Life of the World to Come (2004), Chapter 5, “Another Meeting” (p. 97)

“It didn’t matter that they were terrible at being parents; they were also very rich, which meant they could pay other people to love Alec.”

Part 2 “Babylon is Fallen” Chapter 12 (pp. 259-260)
Mendoza in Hollywood (2000)

“Terrorism was too tame for the Scots: they used lawyers.”

Source: The Life of the World to Come (2004), Chapter 4, “Smart Alec” (p. 55)

“Smashing things is the violent way stupid mortal monkeys solve their problems.”

Source: The Graveyard Game (2001), Chapter 14, “London, 2142” (p. 113)

“Any brute will demand his right to be a law unto himself, beating his wife and his children as he pleases, and defend that right with his father’s rifle and think himself a patriot.”

Source: In the Garden of Iden (1997), Chapter 5 (p. 45)

“A missionary may persuade a painted savage to worship a cross rather than an idol; but he will not make laws that send that savage’s children to school, where they might learn to make the desert they inhabit another Eden by means of the advanced sciences. He may persuade his flock to love one another for his God’s sake, but he’ll invariably urge them to slaughter any neighboring tribe that still worships stone idols. This is the failure of religion as a force for the common welfare.”

Part 3 “The Island Out There” Chapter 3 (pp. 304-305)
Mendoza in Hollywood (2000)

““Consigned to everlasting fire,” said Nicholas in a faint voice. He had gone white as chalk.
“No, you medieval imbecile!” Edward clenched his fists. “You still have no grasp of the truth, have you? Leave your angels and devils in the trash of history, where they belong.””

Part 3 “The Island Out There” Chapter 3 (p. 304)
Mendoza in Hollywood (2000)

“The truth is, Homo sapiens sapiens is pretty much the same the world over, regardless of skin color or technological development. Racists and provincial types have problems with this fact, but it is a fact. All mortals have the same potential, and only chance determines who’s playing a spinet or who’s clubbing dinner to death with a big rock. And, you know what? Mortals adapt to the environment in which they’re placed. Switch babies between savages and technologicals, and nobody notices! I know, because I’ve seen it done. I’ve seen the son of a club-carrying cave dweller fuming because his accounting software wasn’t quite adequate for his needs. All humans have the same brain package.”

Source: The Life of the World to Come (2004), Chapter 20, “Alec Times Three” (p. 309)

Kage Baker book Sky Coyote

Source: Sky Coyote (1999), Chapter 11 (p. 72)

“You have to be pretty damned hot and thirsty to enjoy a soy-milk smoothie, but they were, so it was okay.”

“He saw in memory Mendoza’s face, her black eyes sad as she downloaded a chapter on revolutions.
Here you go. Great heroes and the things they wrecked. Always easier to destroy something than to create something. It’s harder to plant a garden than to blow up a building, and undoubtedly more boring, but you just might need to do it one day, eh?”

Source: The Graveyard Game (2001), Chapter 27, “Avalon” (p. 240)

“Rutherford was a historian, after all, and secretly enjoyed it when the truth did injury to modern sensibilities.”

Source: The Sons of Heaven (2007), Chapter 32, Section 1 “Gray’s Inn Road” (p. 391)

““There,” Joseph said. “There’s your answer.”
“It’s not an answer, little man. It’s many, many more questions.””

Source: The Life of the World to Come (2004), Chapter 11, “Christmas Meeting” (p. 181)

“As it had been explained to David long ago, genetic diversity was very, very important. The more diverse the human gene pool was, the better were humanity’s chances of adapting to any new and unexpected conditions it might encounter, now that it was beginning to push outward into Space, to say nothing of surviving any unexpected natural disasters such as polar shifts or meteor strikes on Earth.
Unfortunately, humanity had been both unlucky and foolish. Out of the dozens of races that had once lived in the world, only a handful had survived into modern times. Some ancient races had been rendered extinct by war. Some had been simply crowded out, retreating into remote regions and forced to breed amongst themselves, which killed them off with lethal recessives.
That had been the bad luck. The foolishness had come when people began to form theories about the process of Evolution. They got it all wrong: most people interpreted the concept of “survival of the fittest” to mean they ought to narrow the gene pool, reducing it in size. So this was done, in genocidal wars and eugenics programs, and how surprised people were when lethal recessives began to occur more frequently! To say nothing of the populations who died in droves when diseases swept through them, because they were all so genetically similar there were none among them with natural immunities.”

Source: The Graveyard Game (2001), Chapter 15, “Fez (I)” (p. 145)

““Oh, that’s childish,” says Nicholas in disgust.
“Well, so what?” says Alec. “We happen to be children.””

Source: The Machine's Child (2006), Chapter 29, “Still Another Morning in 500,000 BCE” (p. 330)

““Edward has a purpose for us. Ruling the world, I assume.”
“He can’t,” says Alec, aghast. “That’s what villains do!””

Source: The Sons of Heaven (2007), Chapter 22, Section 1 “Child Care in the Cyborg Family, Volume Six: The Challenge of Psychological Development” (p. 268)

““Why did I never understand…”
“That it was vanity?” I said.
“Mm, but so much worse… Delusion. Because, the thing is—human progress begins, not with one lone man with a weapon, however heroic. Nor with subtle governments, be they never so altruistic. It begins with a man and his wife in bed… and… how could I ever hope to govern humanity, without having been even that human?”

Source: The Sons of Heaven (2007), Chapter 23, Section 1 “Child Care in the Cyborg Family, Volume Ten: The Awkward Years” (p. 276)

“I may cut my coat to follow fashion, sir, but not my conscience.”

Source: The Sons of Heaven (2007), Chapter 12, Section 1 “Three Months: Extract from the Journal of the Botanist Mendoza: Monsters and Ice Cream” (p. 156)

“Edward holds up a hand for silence. “If you please, Captain: he’s thinking. Let us savor the exquisite rarity of the moment.””

Source: In the Garden of Iden (1997), Chapter 18 (p. 215)

“Privilege tends to soften the brain, or so I’ve observed.”

Source: The Sons of Heaven (2007), Chapter 26, Section 2 “One Week Later, Linear Time” (p. 319)

“Times had changed.
Sooner or later, they always did.”

Part 3 “The Island Out There” Chapter 2 (p. 294)
Mendoza in Hollywood (2000)