David Zindell Quotes

You must remember that an oak tree is not a crime against the acorn.

Do you want to know the secret of life? Bardo will tell you the secret of life: it's not the amount of time we have, despite what I've just said. No it's not quantity and it's not even quality. It's variety.

"What is a human being, then?" ... "A seed." "A … seed?" "An acorn that is unafraid to destroy itself in growing into a tree."

That was the true terror of war, that often one had to accept danger and simply wait to live or die.

Before, you are wise; after, you are wise. In between you are otherwise.

A man lusts to become a god ... and there is murder. Murder upon murder upon murder. Why is the world of men nothing but murder?

What's beautiful is that a creator can be astonished by his own creations.

To be what you want to be: isn't this the essence of being human?

Poems are the dreams of the universe crystallized in words.

"All living things are afraid to die." "No, you're exactly wrong, the only truly alive beings are those unafraid to die."

In time, the heart of each religion grows hard and dies. And so seekers of the godly will always turn to new prophets and new ways, never realizing that, ultimately, all religions separate man from God.

Any robot sufficiently intelligent to clean dishes is too intelligent to clean dishes.

For it is only in accepting death that one can truly live, and for the human animal, death has always been the great black beast from the abyss to be dreaded or defeated or avoided or hated - but never looked upon clearly face to face.

The memory of all things is in all things, Danlo remembered. Nothing is ever truly lost. "The true Elder Eddas," he said "are universal memories. The One memory is just the memory of the universe itself. The way the universe evolves in conscioiusness of itself and causes itself to be. We are just this blessed consciousness, nothing more, nothing less. We are the light inside light that fuses into the atoms of our bodies; we are the fire that whirls across the stellar deeps and dances all things into being." "Now you are speaking mystically again, Little Fellow." "About some things there is no other way to speak."

Faith — what is this emotion but a desperate attempt to escape from mind-burning fear?