Kage Baker Quotes

There, Joseph said. There's your answer.
It's not an answer, little man. It's many, many more questions.

As it had been explained to David long ago, genetic diversity was very, very important. The more diverse the human gene pool was, the better were humanity’s chances of adapting to any new and unexpected conditions it might encounter, now that it was beginning to push outward into Space, to say nothing of surviving any unexpected natural disasters such as polar shifts or meteor strikes on Earth.
Unfortunately, humanity had been both unlucky and foolish. Out of the dozens of races that had once lived in the world, only a handful had survived into modern times. Some ancient races had been rendered extinct by war. Some had been simply crowded out, retreating into remote regions and forced to breed amongst themselves, which killed them off with lethal recessives.
That had been the bad luck. The foolishness had come when people began to form theories about the process of Evolution. They got it all wrong: most people interpreted the concept of “survival of the fittest” to mean they ought to narrow the gene pool, reducing it in size. So this was done, in genocidal wars and eugenics programs, and how surprised people were when lethal recessives began to occur more frequently! To say nothing of the populations who died in droves when diseases swept through them, because they were all so genetically similar there were none among them with natural immunities.

Justice doesn’t exist! We did worse things. Nobody deserves to go to that place, Alec said. Anyway, weren’t you Christian types supposed to forgive everybody?
I will shed no tears for that bastard’s damnation, said Nicholas stonily.
No wonder nobody’s left that believes in your stupid religion, said Alec.

Very shortly the temple was once again a wonder of the world, and the Ephesian Church settled down to a long reign marked only by the usual bitter quarrels, heresies, and internal dissent through which all major faiths struggle.
Any religion begins in a moment of transforming truth. That moment quickly shatters into falsehood and shame and stagecraft, bitter comedy, sometimes murder. Thieves catch hold of any chance for power. The early years of a faith are best not too closely examined by its faithful.

You have to be pretty damned hot and thirsty to enjoy a soy-milk smoothie, but they were, so it was okay.

They find us outlandish, Lopez admitted. Extravagant. Eclectic. Unfathomable.

Edward raises the pointer and places its tip against Alec’s forehead. “What’s the use of having a library in there if you won’t open the books, boy? What’s the good of augmented intelligence if you won’t use it?”

And what a clever guy this Harpole is, isn’t he? Awfully good at noticing all kinds of little unusual things about people and keeping them on file in his head. So he’s built a theory around us, has he? He added two and two and came up with five, but nobody else in the house was aware there was anything to count.

I’ve been in the entertainment industry ever since, in one capacity or another. It’s better than the Inquisition. Usually.

How could millennia-old superbeings be so boring?

He caught his breath, absorbing the impact of the scientific discoveries, the advances in scholarship, the inevitable dwindling into insignificance of issues that had mattered more than his life. He closed his eyes, turned his face away, but he couldn’t stop his understanding.
“You see?” said Edward. “They’re all happy pagans nowadays. When they take the trouble to worship at all. Enlightenment swept most of that nonsense away, and good riddance!”

I looked up at several pockmarks in the nearest wall; if they weren’t bullet holes, the place had damned big hailstones.

“Why did I never understand...”
“That it was vanity?” I said.
“Mm, but so much worse...Delusion. Because, the thing is—human progress begins, not with one lone man with a weapon, however heroic. Nor with subtle governments, be they never so altruistic. It begins with a man and his wife in bed...and...how could I ever hope to govern humanity, without having been even that human?

That is one dark house your God lives in, man. Alec shook his head. You can keep your Age of Faith. Whyn’t you find somebody to worship who isn’t a shracking psychopath?

It didn’t matter that they were terrible at being parents; they were also very rich, which meant they could pay other people to love Alec.