John Barnes Quotes

One of the stranger beliefs in science fiction is a passionate belief in Beautiful Writing--lots and lots of extraspecial exciting words thrown no hurled no CASCADED upon the reader in a shimmering shower of precious verbal gleaming gleanings and a singing pillar of righteous fiery syntactic spinach. The only thing that was good in that sentence was the spinach, and the hell with it.

People who put principles before people are people who hate people. They won’t much care about how well it works, just about how right it is…they may even like it better if it inflicts enough pain.

He’s always known the real way to money is not through production but through control; “The hotel owner gets rich owning the keys, the maids stay poor keeping the toilets clean,” as one of his biz profs back at Madison used to say.

In discussing the existence, or not, of the soul: "I am Caledon. Quite a few of my fellow Caledons still believe there is some essence to a human being, something that makes a person unique." "And you don't." "I don't. I see that people who believe in anything beyond plain physical reality are mainly engaged in making themselves or others miserable."

Jesse, news for the masses, whether it's XV or all the way back to the old newspapers, is entertainment. People don't follow the news to stay informed, no matter what they tell you in school, they watch or experience to be entertained. If it were like they teach in school, they'd put the congressional budget, scientific research, and bios of every important bureaucrat in the opening slot, and they'd do special editions for the Nobel Prizes and the World Health Organization's annual report. That's not what it's about. They cover crime, sports, famous people having sex, funny animal stories, what it's like to stay in an expensive hotel in a resort area. Because that's what's interesting and fun and entertaining.
"It wouldn't matter so much except that people's lives are so dull they believe their entertainment—and for a hundred years we've been telling them that the world is very dangerous, that there are violent thugs everywhere, war is constantly imminent, sex is their most important need, all that crap.
"Well shit, Jesse, if you were a shrink and you had a patient who only wanted to talk about violence, extravagance, cruelty, and his sexual fantasies—what would you suggest? More of the same?"
Jesse's a bit startled, but he asks, "Whatever happened to freedom of the press?"
She snorts, a funny, ugly noise. Then she says, "Sorry, Jesse, but what does that have to do with the present day? You think the broadcast nets are like Ben Franklin, turning out little pamphlets for a few to read and most to ignore? Look, a few huge private corporations are making all their money by spreading fear, hate, depression, and an exploitive attitude. Justice would demand public hangings."

He’s stunned numb when she takes his hand and says, “Let’s give it a try. I’ve been thinking maybe I don’t bend enough or try to see anyone else’s point of view.”

How he must have been astonished to see people behaving decently when what they believed was absolute anathema to him.

Work does not cause money; getting paid causes money.

Papa always says there’s room for everyone, but some people certainly take theirs up without making it interesting.

I never get into arguments between people of opposite gender," he said. "Part of why I'm still healthy and vigorous at my age.

One reason nature pleases us is its endless use of a few simple principles: the cube-square law; fractals; spirals; the way that waves, wheels, trig functions, and harmonic oscillators are alike; the importance of ratios between small primes; bilateral symmetry; Fibonacci series, golden sections, quantization, strange attractors, path-dependency, all the things that show up in places where you don’t expect them...these rules work with and against each other ceaselessly at all levels, so that out of their intrinsic simplicity comes the rich complexity of the world around us. That tension—between the simple rules that describe the world and the complex world we see—is itself both simple in execution and immensely complex in effect. Thus exactly the levels, mixtures, and relations of complexity that seem to be hardwired into the pleasure centers of the human brain—or are they, perhaps, intrinsic to intelligence and perception, pleasant to anything that can see, think, create?—are the ones found in the world around us.

Shan had always said that in any multiple choice about human motivation, the real answer was always "all of the above."

See, if you're on top, it's easy to think that what's good for you is what's good for the organization. In the short run it might even be—a company does better if it gets more work for less wages paid, or if it spends less on health and safety.
"In the longer run, though, workers do the work. Management doesn't. If workers are sick, hurt, pissed off, or broke, they don't work as well."
As Papa's daughter, I'm a pretty good debater myself, and cross ex is one of my strong points. "But then there's no problem. Doesn't the company have an interest in keeping the workers working?"
"Sure—but for as little as possible. Suppose a manager got us all to work two extra hours per day for half pay. Who would get the added profit?"
"NAC," I admitted.
"Well, that's what I'm trying to say. Management works for the employer, and at least in the short run your employer's interests are exactly opposite yours. No matter how nice a guy your manager is, he still gets paid to be your enemy.
"But that's not the whole story. Otherwise I suppose they just make slaves of us or we'd kill them. The fact is, they don't dare win—because if they destroy the worker, who will make the product or buy it? The union limits how much management can win. So in a sense the union looks after the long run. Or justice, which might be the same thing."

Yeats fussed about things falling apart and the center not being able to hold. What really happened was that the center ceased to exist altogether.

He wasn’t as dumb as I thought, I realized—just not interested in the same things I was.