Gregory Benford

At least being prosperous set one apart in England; here it guaranteed nothing, not even taste.

Given a choice between existential despair and rapt religious fervor, her crowd chose marijuana.

Marches don’t stop markets.

Nobody out here was going to find an alternative here to Earth’s tiresome clash of selfish individualisms and stifling collectivisms.

Orange County, with its signature long lines of tall palm trees, was working toward being “max-frilled,” as the slang had it, but at least it didn’t have the touches of L.A. The post office didn’t offer valet parking yet. On rainy days parking tickets weren’t slipped inside protective envelopes, as in Beverly Hills. There were no water bars, with fifty chilled varieties at two bucks a glass, with no ice because it would erase the regional subtleties. And when you called the police department and got put on hold, no classical music played.

(Crank theories) always violated the first rule of a scientific model: they were uncheckable.

No matter how much you plan for it, the real thing seems curiously, well, unreal.

Organic forms are in the universe of things and also reside in the universe of essences. There we cannot go. … You are a spontaneous product of the universe of things. We are not. This seems to give you … windows. It was difficult for me to monitor your domestic transmissions, they fill up with branches, spontaneous paths, nuances…

“Diversity” had come to mean Balkanization.

A rich bank account did not mean rich ideas; in fact, often the reverse. The bigger your ass, the more you want to cover it.

There's plenty—" "Plenty is exactly what there's none of.

Maybe is not a theory, you know, it is merely maybe.

Why paired?" Viktor asked. "Have two sexes?" "Hard to imagine how electromagnetic creatures could," Mary Kay said. Viktor grinned. "Lack of imagination is not an argument. Especially lately.

Still, Claire hated Charlotte Brontë’s comment that she would have given all her talent to be beautiful. That condemned you always to play somebody else’s game—and, when your looks failed—finally to lose.

Man doesn’t have to take a gamble just ’cause it’s there. You got to learn that.