Michael Bishop Quotes (25 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

Works

No Enemy But Time

Michael Bishop

Michael Bishop: 25 quotes0 likes

Famous Michael Bishop Quotes

“What motivates you, then? Please don’t tell me altruism. I am not quite so gullible as that.”

Michael Bishop

Source: A Funeral for the Eyes of Fire (1975), Chapter 2, “Covenant: Derringer and Dascra” (p. 41)

“God could hardly damn me for a coward, great cosmic exemplar of laissez-faire that he is.”

Michael Bishop

Source: A Funeral for the Eyes of Fire (1975), Chapter 2, “Covenant: Derringer and Dascra” (p. 34)

“A rational, humane solution—for Gelvri, as Elgran Vrai, believed rationality and humaneness tautologies, different names for the same thing.”

Michael Bishop

Source: A Funeral for the Eyes of Fire (1975), Chapter 14, “Denouement: Ascent to the Acropolis” (p. 266)

“But each man who worships you sees only what he wishes to see rather than any mystery you may actually embody.”

Michael Bishop

Source: A Funeral for the Eyes of Fire (1975), Chapter 6, “Inquisition: The Messiah Who Came Too Late” (p. 113)

“Like all such prophecies, it’s impressive only if not examined too closely.”

Michael Bishop

Source: A Funeral for the Eyes of Fire (1975), Chapter 13, “Aftermath: Sarcophagi and Coffins” (p. 249)

“They had both changed in eight years, eroded or subtly augmented by the sweep of time’s river.”

Michael Bishop book No Enemy But Time

Source: No Enemy But Time (1982), Chapter 30 “Marakoi, Zarakal” (p. 303)

Michael Bishop Quotes about time

“Here he was, not quite twenty-five years old, and he was going to have to make a new life for himself. A host of options lay before him, but, tipsy with Chablis and sunshine, at the moment all he could truly feel was a powerful sense of loss and uncertainty. All the routes to his previous self—the self that had tried to survive as a loner in Fort Walton Beach—were blocked, and he did not know which new path to choose.
“Ciao,” he said again, and this time he was not talking to his mother.”

Michael Bishop book No Enemy But Time

Source: No Enemy But Time (1982), Chapter 30 “Marakoi, Zarakal” (p. 315; closing words)

““Nature has its own logic, or so brother Peter tells us.”
“The logic of chance—amoral and sometimes inaccurate.”
“Well, Foutlif, we Earthmen are products of the ‘natural’ process; consequently, you shouldn’t be surprised to find us both of those things at times—amoral and inaccurate.””

Michael Bishop

Source: A Funeral for the Eyes of Fire (1975), Chapter 4, “Enlightenment: Down on the Edgegleam Plains” (p. 83)

“Time, as it always does, passed.”

Michael Bishop book No Enemy But Time

Coda (p. 316)
No Enemy But Time (1982)

Michael Bishop Quotes

“Extinction confers on the has-been the same mythological status that imagination confers on the never-was.”

Michael Bishop book No Enemy But Time

Source: No Enemy But Time (1982), Chapter 18 “In a Season of Drought” (p. 158)

“The vitality of children is clean and honest. Their petty shortcomings derive, in ninety-nine out of a hundred instances, from their effete elders’ pettiness. Contagion is a generational fact. But children can develop defenses against their elders’ spiritual scurvy simply because they’re new.”

Michael Bishop

Source: A Funeral for the Eyes of Fire (1975), Chapter 5, “Ambivalence: The Children of the Ouemartsee” (p. 93)

“Both God and man hold each other in equally beautiful contempt.”

Michael Bishop

Source: A Funeral for the Eyes of Fire (1975), Chapter 11, “Usurpation: Two Meteors, Prodigal of Light” (p. 196)

“Outside the rain continued its cadenced and indifferent commentary.”

Michael Bishop

Source: A Funeral for the Eyes of Fire (1975), Chapter 12, “Debacle: The Swarmings” (p. 240)

“Necessary is often the mother of light fingers instead of invention.”

Michael Bishop book No Enemy But Time

Source: No Enemy But Time (1982), Chapter 10 “Fruit of the Looms” (p. 76)

“Don’t look for reason where it’s never been practiced.”

Michael Bishop

Source: A Funeral for the Eyes of Fire (1975), Chapter 5, “Ambivalence: The Children of the Ouemartsee” (p. 92)

“What was reprehensible in being fearful in the presence of the unknown?”

Michael Bishop

Source: A Funeral for the Eyes of Fire (1975), Chapter 1, “Planetfall: The Hawks of Conscience” (p. 33)

““Magistrate, a problem doesn’t cease to exist simply because you cease to consider it a problem.”
”Very often, Deputy Foutlif, it does.””

Michael Bishop

Source: A Funeral for the Eyes of Fire (1975), Chapter 11, “Usurpation: Two Meteors, Prodigal of Light” (p. 200)

““Do you expect even dreams to unravel rationally, Kahl Balduin? Must each event have a precise, empirical cause?”
“No, not if you’re narrating a dream. But if you claim, like the Pledgeson, that your visions and reality are the same thing, then, yes I expect consistency. I’m too old for pointless fairy tales.””

Michael Bishop

Source: A Funeral for the Eyes of Fire (1975), Chapter 7, “Interlude: Heartseed and Tower” (p. 142)

“Who but a madman would grapple with mountains?”

Michael Bishop

Source: A Funeral for the Eyes of Fire (1975), Chapter 4, “Enlightenment: Down on the Edgegleam Plains” (p. 75)

“I have thought a little about a telepathic community, and I have decided that it would most likely create either a thoroughly paranoiac or a thoroughly homogeneous unit of individuals. Complete suspicion and hostility in the one instance, total harmony and concord in the other. I do not like either alternative.”

Michael Bishop

Source: A Funeral for the Eyes of Fire (1975), Chapter 2, “Covenant: Derringer and Dascra” (p. 35)

“Coercion is the tool of the desperate.”

Michael Bishop

Source: A Funeral for the Eyes of Fire (1975), Chapter 3, “Superstitions: A Night Piece” (p. 64)

“He forgave these Tropemen, then felt contempt for himself for the presumption of extending forgiveness, then forgave again, then cursed his own vanity, forgave once more, condemned his presumption, and at last forgave even himself.”

Michael Bishop

Source: A Funeral for the Eyes of Fire (1975), Chapter 14, “Denouement: Ascent to the Acropolis” (p. 265)

“Paleoanthropologists were congenitally media-oriented.”

Michael Bishop book No Enemy But Time

Source: No Enemy But Time (1982), Chapter 17 “Pensacola, Florida” (p. 147)

“You can’t go home again, particularly if you never had one.”

Michael Bishop book No Enemy But Time

Source: No Enemy But Time (1982), Chapter 23 “Panama City, Florida” (p. 206)

“Do you expect even dreams to unravel rationally, Kahl Balduin? Must each event have a precise, empirical cause?”

Michael Bishop

“No, not if you’re narrating a dream. But if you claim, like the Pledgeson, that your visions and reality are the same thing, then, yes I expect consistency. I’m too old for pointless fairy tales.”
Source: A Funeral for the Eyes of Fire (1975), Chapter 7, “Interlude: Heartseed and Tower” (p. 142)