Harry Turtledove Quotes

Sir, don't you think Utah is a special case?" "Every case has partisans who insist it is special," Hoover answered. "I recognize none of them. I believe none of them. The same principles must apply throughout the United States.

If you started thinking the whole world was like the part of it where you lived, you were going to be wrong a lot of the time.

There’s no such thing as glory, near as I can tell. If the machine guns didn’t kill it, the artillery did.

Walter Taylor asked, "Mr. Rhoodie, what do you call this rifle of yours? Is it a Rhoodie, too? Most inventors name their products for themselves, do they not?" "No, it's not a Rhoodie." The big stranger unslung the rifle, held it in both hands as gently as if it were a baby. "Give it its proper name, Major. It's an AK-47."

He realized, belatedly, that he had been less than diplomatic. That did not bother him, either: he was less than diplomatic.

It was like dying and going to hell, except a little hotter and a little stickier. July in Tennessee was not the ideal weather in which to fight in a barrel.

They eyed each other in perfect mutual incomprehension.

"If it works, he'll take the credit," Bokov warned once they were safely outside NKVD headquarters. "Oh, sure," Shteinberg agreed. "But he'd do that anyway." Bokov laughed, not that his superior was joking- or wrong.

Judah Benjamin said, "The nations of Europe continue to abhor our policy, try as we will to convince them that we cannot do otherwise. Mr. Mason has written from London that Her Majesty's government might well have been willing to extend us recognition two years ago, were it not for the continuation of slavery among us: so Lord Russell has assured him, at any rate. Mr. Thouvenel, the French foreign minister, has expressed similar sentiments to Mr. Slidell in Paris." Slavery, Lee thought. In the end, the world's outside view of the Confederate States of America was colored almost exclusively by its response to the South's peculiar institution. Never mind that the U.S. Constitution was a revocable compact between independent states, never mind that the North had consistently used its numerical majority to force through Congress tariffs that worked only to ruin the South. So long as black men were bought and sold, all the high ideals of the Confederacy would be ignored.

Himmler steepled his fingers. "Well, Reinhard, what brings you up from Prague today?" His voice was fussy and precise, like a schoolmaster's.

The only happy people she saw coming out of the place were a young couple, the man carrying a crying baby. Maternity wards are different, Nellie thought as she went past them. I bet they’re the only place in a hospital where people win instead of losing.

A fisherman who wasn’t a born pessimist hadn’t been going to sea long enough.

Why do we have such a pack of confounded dunderheads running this country?" "My theory used to be that we get the government we deserve," Sam said. "Bad as we are, though, I don't think we're that bad. Right now, I'm taking a long look at the notion that God hates us.

A man who gets angry at the truth will have a hard time in life, don’t you think?

Courage and the goodness of one’s cause, unfortunately, do not always go hand in hand.