Harry Turtledove Quotes

Some people had a vested interest in trouble. If it looked as if calm threatened to break out, people like that would do anything they could to thwart it.

“God done made this happen. He kin make us come through it, too, so long as He take it in His mind He want to do dat.”
“Amen,” Athenaeus said. Scipio made himself nod. He didn’t want to seem out of place—seeming out of place was one of his greatest fears, because it was deadly dangerous. But if God had really wanted to do something about this disaster, couldn’t He have stopped it in the first place?

In a way, misery loves company. In another way, if everyone’s in trouble, nobody can help anybody else get out of it.

The Confederate States had been founded on the principle that change was a bad idea.

Flora wasn’t sure she liked that in the abstract; whom a man knew shouldn’t have mattered so much as what he knew. But that didn’t change reality one bit.

They eyed each other in perfect mutual incomprehension.

God bless you, suh, for what you done there." "I don't believe in God, anymore than I believe in Mother Goose," Darrow said. "Foolish notion. But I do believe in justice, and you deserve that. Everyone deserves that.

She knew the sea too well ever to trust it.

When he came up for air, he gasped, “You never kissed me like that before.”
“Well, you never asked me to marry you before, either,” Rita answered.
He laughed. They kissed again. Heart pounding, he asked, “What else don’t I know?”
“You’ll find out,” she said. “After the wedding.”

Yes, I know I haven’t told you anything. No offense, Sis, but you like running people’s lives so much, you don’t like it when they try and run their own.

Soldiers don’t make policy. We only carry it out, and get blamed when it goes wrong.

He spent years alternately chasing her and trying—always without much luck—to get her out of his mind. Now that he’d finally got her, finally found out just how much woman she was, losing her was the last thing he wanted. But two had to say yes. One was plenty for no.

What's Guinness?" Hirskowitz asked Carsten. "It's what they make in Ireland instead of beer," Sam said helpfully. "It's black as fuel oil, and almost as thick. It tastes kind of burnt till you get used to it. After that, it's not so bad." "Oh." Hirskowitz weighed that. "Well, I'll see. They make real beer, too?

“Something wrong, sir?” Lieutenant Jenkins asked.
“No good deed goes unpunished,” Morrell answered.

They wouldn’t understand no matter what, any more than they would understand what life in the trenches was like. Experience brought understanding. Nothing else came close.