Leigh Brackett Quotes

“Better to make haste slowly than not at all,” said Amnir sententiously.

The Thyrans came on, as merciless as time.

I have let it blow through me, and it is just a wind. I have let the words sound in my ears, and they are nothing but words, spoken by an ignorant man with a dusty beard. They do not stir me, they do not touch me. I am done with them, too.
I know now what lies across the land, the slow and heavy weight. They call it faith, but it is not faith. It is fear. The people have clapped a shelter over their heads, a necessity of ignorance, a passion of retreat, and they have called it God, and worshiped it.

Invisibility is a condition of godhead. If folk could see them, they would know the truth, and the Lords Protector would cease to be divine.

There’s never been an act done since the beginning, from a kid stealing candy to a dictator committing genocide, that the person doing it didn’t think he was fully justified. That’s a mental trick called rationalizing, and it’s done the human race more harm than anything else you can name.

Was he trying to frighten you?"
"I don't think so," said Len. "I think he was just telling me the truth.

You can’t destroy knowledge. You can stamp it under and burn it up and forbid it to be, but somewhere it will survive.

Knowledge is not like sin. There is no mystical escape from it.

He could hear Pa’s voice saying, “A man’s religion, his sect, is his own affair. But those people have no religion or sect. They’re a mob, with a mob’s fear and cruelty, and with half-crazy, cunning men stirring them up against others.”

The man who doesn’t fear, doesn’t live long. I fear everything.

Why did they do it?" he asked.
"Because they're afraid."
"Of what?"
"Of yesterday," said Mr. Hostetter. "Of tomorrow.

Stark did not like them. There was a touch of madness in them, born of the long dark and the too-long-held faith.

Stark said wearily, “I don’t think you understand.” Normally he was tolerant of tribal fancies, but he felt no great tenderness for the Outdwellers. “The stars are already defiled. They’re only suns, like that one over your head. They have worlds around them, like this one under your feet. People live on those worlds, people who never heard of Outdwellers or their footling goddess. And the starships fly between them. It’s all going on out there, this second as you stand here, and nothing you can do will stop it.”

The mountains dwindled away into hills covered with a dark, stunted scrub. Beyond them the land flattened out to the horizon, a treeless immensity of white and gray-green, a spongy mossiness flecked with a million icy ponds. The wind blew, sometimes hard, sometimes harder.

I grew up with the idea of it," said Hostetter. "Nobody ever taught me that it was evil or forbidden, or that God had put a curse on it, and that's the difference.