Top 15 Harry Turtledove Quotes

People were as they were, not not as he wished them to be.

You count snouts,” Straha said. “Whichever side can persuade most snouts to join it prevails. It does not have to be clever. It does not have to be wise. It only needs to be popular.

"...Do you see things in black and white, or are there shades of gray for you?"
"I hope there's gray...Black and white make things easier, but only if you don't want to think."

The difference between bad and worse is a lot bigger than the difference between good and better.

He gathered enthusiasm when he thought of the goal, and not the means by which he had accomplished it.

Well, I might even get used to the idea that she had no tail.

Somewhere near the Alamo, a bugle brayed: either that or McCulloch’s men had found some reason to torture a poor, defenseless donkey.

If a republic will stand or fall on the fate of any single man, it finds itself in grave danger indeed,

When you thought of permanent oblivion, temporary oblivion was the only foxhole you had.

If you’re gonna be broke, you could pick plenty of worse places to do it than Tacoma. It’s not too hot; it’s not too cold. It’s as green as any place could want to be. You’ve got the bay on one side and the mountains on the other. Mount Rainier is as big and beautiful a mountain as anybody would ever care to see. When you could see it through the haze, I mean. Even when it’s not raining around there, the air’s damp. No wonder it’s all so green.

He said, “You misunderstand. We did not kill the nuggies and the other folk hereabouts. They see us, and then they commonly die.”
“Of what?” I asked.
“Of embarrassment.

That anyone would want to be famous still mystified Colin. As TV had trained him to do, he associated the word with divorces and court appearances and rehab and jail time. He knew more than he wanted about all of those except rehab, and that was the one famous people blew off anyway.

If dogs had gods, those they worshiped would wag their tails and bark. If sheep had gods, they would follow woolly deities who grazed. As the world is, almost all folk have many things in common, as if the gods who shaped them were using certain parts of a pattern over and over again. The folk striding towards us through the green, green grass might have been the pattern itself, the pattern from whose rearranged pieces the rest of us had been clumsily reassembled. As bronze, which had brought us here, is an alloy of copper and tin, so I saw that sirens were an alloy of these folk and birds, sphinxes of them and birds and lions, satyrs of them and goats, fauns of them and horses. And I saw that we centaurs blended these folk and horses as well, though in different proportions, as one bronze will differ from another depending on how much is copper and how much tin. Is it any wonder, then, that, on seeing this folk, I at once began to wonder if I had any true right to exist?
“Who are you? What is your folk?” I asked him.
“I am Geraint,” he answered. “I am a man.

A horsefly can't do a horse much damage, but it can drive it wild anyway.

What does not corrupt a man’s heart cannot corrupt his life, or do him any lasting harm.