George Alec Effinger Quotes

Brant felt a spasm of pain. “Uh,” she said. She closed her eyes tight until the pain went away.
“Can I do anything?” said Staefler.
“Yes,” she said. “Have my baby for me.”

I wonder," he thought, "is it worth getting myself crushed in that crowd just to save my life? Is it worth getting all frustrated and angry, lowering myself to their level, pushing and shoving with all the rest, fighting like a common animal, just to stay alive?" He smiled ruefully. "It always comes to the simple question: what is more important, life or self-respect?

We tread on unsure ground, theologically. The doctrines are still in the malleable state; what eventually evolves from them will owe its existence not to pre-eminent merit, but to the shrewdness of the compromises made by the factions.

“I have been waiting for a sign. I knew that if I waited here long enough my bird, that tarishawk that rests here each day, I knew that he would come. Our Mother said that if he flew from the right, then I would have good fortune. If he came from the left, my journey would be disastrous for me, and it would bear no positive fruits for you.”
“And the hawk? Which way did it come? Did it come from the left?”
Dore smiled once more; his smile was always the most cheerless aspect of him. “The hawk has not come at all,” he said.

I see unhealthy signs of a new regime of religiosity and conservatism.

Now we have the prospect of a religious war on our hands, with the attendant proliferation of “heresies” and two separate but equal inquisitions.

We’re going to tell you about what it’s like, and what just might happen to you, and if you still want to be a writers we’ll know you’re insane.

The party had demanded this; Weintraub was to be a scapegoat, the local conspirator in the Reichstag tragedy. “I suppose I can’t doubt them,” he thought, as his heart pounded, as his mouth grew dry, as he felt his head become airy and his thoughts giddy. “After all, the Party has the broadest perspective. I don’t have any real sense of this worldwide operation. It’s all for the greater good, I guess. They know what they’re doing.”

“I think you should know that I’m a devout Christian.” I took that to mean that my new servant wholeheartedly disapproved of almost everything I might say or do.

Marriage was something I thought happened only to other people, like fatal traffic accidents.

The night is this city’s single resource. Well, that and disease.

You underestimate the ability of people to act like idiots.

I believe that it is possible to overlegislate ourselves into a highly restrictive form of government.

The only negative thing she had to say was that I displayed a tendency to exaggerate the facts for the sake of interesting reading.

“You shouldn’t be so critical,” said Mike the bartender. “Some people like this kind of thing, you know.”
“The kind of person who gets excited over that, I don’t care about,” said Ernest.