Connie Willis Quotes

Management’ll never go for it. First, it’s live-animal research, which is controversial. Management hates controversy. Second, it’s something innovative, which means Management will hate it on principle.

Management cares about only one thing. Paperwork. They will forgive almost anything else—cost overruns, gross incompetence, criminal indictments—as long as the paperwork’s filled out properly. And in on time.

Nobody deserves this. “Please,” she prayed, and wasn’t sure what she asked.
Whatever it was, it was not granted.

Contrary to popular belief, the computer graphics revolution didn't kill the musical," the prof said. "The musical kicked off," he paused to let the class titter, "in 1965.…
"The musicals, with their contrived storylines, unrealistic song-and-dance sequences, and simplistic happy endings, no longer reflected the audience's world.

Therein lay the secret to all fads: the herd instinct. People wanted to look like everybody else. That was why they bought white bucks and pedal pushers and bikinis. But someone had to be the first one to wear platform shoes, to bob their hair, and that took the opposite of herd instinct.

We came out on Hollywood Boulevard, on the corner of Chaos and Sensory Overload, the worst possible place to flash.

They're absolutely necrotic, aren't they?" Colin whispered behind his order of service.
"It's late twentieth century atonal," Dunworthy whispered back. "It's supposed to sound dreadful.

And why take a chance on a new movie when they can do a sequel or a copy or a remake of something they already own? And while we are at it, why not star remakes in the remake? Hollywood, the ultimate recycler!

It doesn’t matter, she thought, and realized in spite of everything, horror after horror, Roche still believed in God. He had been going to the church to say matins when he found the steward, and if they all died, he would go on saying them and not find anything incongruous in his prayers.

He sorted all the mail into three piles of “for” and “against” and “wildly insane,” then threw all of them into the wastebasket.

It is a temporal universal that people never appreciate their own time, especially transportation. Twentieth-Century contemps complained about cancelled flights and gasoline prices, Eighteenth-Century contemps complained about muddy roads and highwaymen. No doubt Professor Peddick’s Greeks complained about recalcitrant horses and chariot wheels falling off.

That makes no sense," I said.
"This is the Victorian era," she said. "Women didn't have to make sense.

A cage is a safe place as long as nobody has the key.

There are moments when rather than reforming the human race I’d like to abandon it altogether and go become, say, one of Dr. O’Reilly’s macaques, which have to have more sense.

Everyone else had the look of tired patience people always got when listening to a sermon, no matter what the century.