James Blish Quotes

I’ve already given you the whole explanation of how that came about. It happened because it was going to happen. All other explanations for anything are superfluous. All other explanations for anything.

They had all been things, not people, to each other, which after all is the only sensible and fruitful attitude in a thing-dominated world. (Except, of course, for Father Domenico, whose desire to prevent anybody from accomplishing anything, chiefly by wringing his hands, had to be written off as the typical, incomprehensible attitude of the mystic—a howling anachronism in the modern world, and predictably ineffectual.) And in point of fact none of them—not even Father Domenico—could fairly be said to have failed. Instead, they had all been betrayed. Their plans and operations had all depended implicitly upon the existence of God—even Jack, who had entered Positano as an atheist, had been reluctantly forced to grant that—and in the final pinch, He had turned out to have been not around any more after all. If this shambles was anyone’s fault, it was His.

Munitions and magic are circles that don’t intersect very effectively.

We often resort to something called Hilbert space, which is described as n-dimensional—it’s like modern sex, any number may be played with.

A common thief with a gun in his hand isn’t half as dangerous as an engineer with a stick of dynamite.

The express pulled into the Stazione Termini in Rome five minutes ahead of schedule with a feminine shriek. Ruiz found a porter with no difficulty, tipped him the standard 100 lire for his two pieces of luggage, and gave directions. The priest’s Italian was adequate, but hardly standard; it made the facchino grin with delight every time Ruiz opened his mouth. He had learned it by reading, partly in Dante, mostly in opera libretti, and consequently what he lacked in accent he made up for in flowery phrases; he was unable to ask the way to the nearest fruit stall without sounding as though he would throw himself into the Tiber unless he got an answer.

Never assume that any fact is useless until it is so proven.

We cannot count upon the secret being kept. It’s a fact of nature, and as somebody or other remarked long ago, Nature is a blabbermouth; ask the right question, and you’ll always get the answer.

We hear you, Father," he said surprisingly. "Yet we sense that though what you say is the truth, it is not the whole truth.

The subject was complex enough to nurture family splits as rancorous and as final as the theological hairsplitting which had been the bane of other ages.

The early anatomists, who laid the foundations of scientific medicine, were primarily artists; the early psychotherapists, like Freud, were primarily poets. Neither group ever cured anything, but each opened up a previously forbidden area of investigation. Both were retired to the sidelines when really hardcore knowledge began to be available.

Now that I'm a free agent I mean to make my own choices, and explain them to nobody if that’s what pleases me.

One death is as good as another, if death is what you are courting.

The motto of the bureau," Weinbaum said, "is, 'sometimes something works.'

Actually, there are never motives behind actions. All actions are fixed. What we call motives evidently are rationalizations by the helpless observing consciousness, which is intelligent enough to smell an event coming—and, since it cannot avert the event, instead cooks up reasons for wanting it to happen...or ascribes it to the malice of God or man.