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Robert Sheckley: 228 quotes2 likes

“After many centuries we have rediscovered nature’s way of keeping populations in hand. Nature does it the old-fashioned way, by killing people.”

Robert Sheckley book Victim Prime

Prologue (p. 8)
Victim Prime (1987)

“It takes a particular kind of a man to endure the shattering immensities of space and the paranoid-inducing stresses of threats from the unknown. It takes a man with a large and impervious ego and a consistently high degree of aggressive self-confidence. It takes a kind of a nut.”

Robert Sheckley book Welcome to the Standard Nightmare

Welcome to the Standard Nightmare (p. 88)
Short fiction, The Robot Who Looked Like Me (1978)

“Love, the secret and unofficial heart of pair-bonding behavior, is a force to be reckoned with but never predicted. Love supersedes all other directives and cancels previous obligations. The shared look of love is love’s preview, presenting a foretaste of the joys and sorrows to come, and setting into motion the automatic mating machinery upon which the success and stability of the State depends.”

Robert Sheckley

Sneak Previews (p. 85)
Short fiction, The Robot Who Looked Like Me (1978)

“Kettelman bristled. Nothing got him angrier than when people implied he was paranoid. It made him feel persecuted.”

Robert Sheckley

A Supplicant in Space (p. 60)
Short fiction, The Robot Who Looked Like Me (1978)

“From one viewpoint there were (potentially) a multiplicity of Gleisters; but from another viewpoint there was only one, and he was that one. After all, it didn’t matter what these other people called themselves or where they came from; he was only the person he was here and now, the person whom he experienced. Reality is positional, ego is relational, and nature doesn’t deal in abstractions.”

Robert Sheckley

Slaves of Time (p. 19)
Short fiction, The Robot Who Looked Like Me (1978)

“Not only can you not step into the same river twice; it is not even the same you who can’t step into the same river twice. Everything modifies everything. There is no niche in the past waiting for him to come back and occupy it. Nature will tolerate a paradox, but she abhors a vacuum.”

Robert Sheckley

Slaves of Time (p. 18)
Short fiction, The Robot Who Looked Like Me (1978)

“Linguistic accommodation as well. Are they speaking my language or am I speaking theirs? I can never know: the transaction cannot watch itself being transacted.”

Robert Sheckley

Slaves of Time (p. 16)
Short fiction, The Robot Who Looked Like Me (1978)

“It is all so familiar! I suppose that an electron, traveling from one atom to another, also expects to enter a realm of unimaginable novelty. But perhaps the scenery in every part of the universe is roughly similar; since one sees in accordance with who one is rather than with what is there.”

Robert Sheckley

Slaves of Time (p. 16)
Short fiction, The Robot Who Looked Like Me (1978)

“Nothing happens for the first time, especially if what you’re trying to do is to invent something absolutely novel and unprecedented. Of course, if nothing happens for the first time, that leaves the apparent problem of how anything happens at all. But the difficulty is entirely semantic: in the eternal recurrence of subatomic configurations of which our world is a simulacrum, there is no question of beginnings or endings. There are only middles, continuations, repetitions. Originality is a concept possible only to a limited viewpoint.”

Robert Sheckley

Slaves of Time (pp. 14-15)
Short fiction, The Robot Who Looked Like Me (1978)

“Charlie Gleister had invented a time machine, but he hadn’t invented it right because it didn’t work.”

Robert Sheckley

Slaves of Time (p. 11)
Short fiction, The Robot Who Looked Like Me (1978)

“I found her charming, went home and thought no more about her. Or, I thought I would think no more about her. But in the following days and nights her image remained obsessively before my eyes. My appetite fell off and I began sleeping badly. My computer checked out the relevant data and told me that I might conceivably be having a nervous breakdown; but the strongest inference was that I was in love.”

Robert Sheckley book The Robot Who Looked Like Me

The Robot Who Looked Like Me (p. 3)
Short fiction, The Robot Who Looked Like Me (1978)

“It was one hell of an inspection when you went around finding how many sane men you had left.”

Robert Sheckley

Fool’s Mate (p. 87)
Short fiction, Shards of Space (1962)

“Hope could be dangerous, desire could be catastrophic.”

Robert Sheckley

The Girls and Nugent Miller (p. 24)
Short fiction, Shards of Space (1962)

“Had he been right or was he just another visionary?”

Robert Sheckley book Watchbird

Watchbird (p. 44)
Short fiction, Notions: Unlimited (1960)

“You simply can’t throw strangers together at random and expect the fiery, quick romance to turn into love. Love has its own rules and enforces them rigidly.”

Robert Sheckley

Gray Flannel Armor (p. 9)
Short fiction, Notions: Unlimited (1960)

“Ifs and buts could erode the soundest of principles.”

Robert Sheckley

Hands Off (p. 86)
Short fiction, Citizen in Space (1955)

“What kind of intelligent beings would evolve on a planet that is all mountains?”

Robert Sheckley

“Stupid ones!” Casker said.
Untouched by Human Hands (p. 75)
Short fiction, Untouched by Human Hands (1954)

“This planet’s secret menace was—freedom!”

Robert Sheckley book Shape

Shape (p. 44)
Short fiction, Untouched by Human Hands (1954)

“Isn’t there anything you can do about the predator?”

Robert Sheckley book Dimension of Miracles

Carmody asked.
“Nothing. Nor would I if I could. Predation is a necessary circumstance. Even the Gods are eventually eaten by Fate. You will not be an exception to the universal rule.”

Chapter 21 (p. 136)
Dimension of Miracles (1968)

“It might have meant something, or it might not have. That was the thing about uncertainty, you were never sure.”

Robert Sheckley book Hunter/Victim

Source: Hunter/Victim (1988), Chapter 18 (p. 100)