Harry Turtledove Quotes

"It is an evil, sir, an unmitigated evil," Lincoln said. "I shall never forget the group of chained Negroes I saw going down the river to be sold close to a quarter of a century ago. Never was there so much misery, all in one place. If your secession triumphs, the South will be a pariah among nations." "We shall be recognized as what we are, a nation among nations," Lee returned. "And, let me repeat, my being here is a sign secession has triumphed. What I would seek to do now, subject to the ratification of my superiors, is suggest terms to halt the war between the United States and Confederate States." Lincoln refused to call Lee's country by its proper name. As a small measure of revenge, Lee put extra weight on that name. Lincoln sighed. This was the moment he had tried to evade, but there was no evading it, not with the commander of the Army of Northern Virginia in his parlor. "Name your terms, General," he said in a voice full of ashes.

When you lose, Sis, the last war’s never over and done with.

When you were fifteen, you knew everything always turned out fine in the end. Arthur McGregor was a good deal past twice fifteen. He knew how foolish you were at that age.

Mosquitoes laid eggs in those ponds and then rose in buzzing, biting swarms. Sometimes the clouds of them were thick enough to dim the sun. It was as if the soul of a vampire were reincarnated in a million beings instead of just one.

Don’t do anything to make things worse was the eleventh commandment of the ghetto, at least as important as the original ten.

That's logical. That's a rational," Hosea Blackford said. "Politics, unfortunately, is neither.

Every so often, though, the passing years up and ambushed him. They had more skill at it than any Yankees. One day, they would shoot him down from ambush, too.

Women are what made me the way I am now. I do not believe the illness is also the cure.

The lad was at an age where he was inclined to believe things would turn out as he wanted for no better reason than that he wanted them to turn out so.

If Earl Eyvind wanted to talk nonsense, he was welcome to, as far as Hamnet was concerned.
If he wanted anyone else to take him seriously when he did…that was another story altogether.

A man who couldn’t see truth when it tried to shoot him wouldn’t live long, and didn’t deserve to.

“We’d never—” Alexander began, but he didn’t finish the sentence. When you were in a war, who could say what you might be driven to do?

Martyrdom was easier to contemplate in the abstract than to embrace in the flesh.

She looked so angelic, any real angel who saw her would have been extremely suspicious.

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.