Leigh Brackett Quotes

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.

There was a smell in the air now. The hot, close, frightening small of mob; mob excited, hungry, dreaming blood and death. The primitive in Stark knew that sweaty acridity all too well.

Aren't you even curious?" he asked. "A million worlds out there with more wonders than I could tell you in a million years, and you don't even want to ask a question?

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

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

Hell, how do you think the human race ever learned anything, except by trial and error?"
"But it all takes such a long, long time," said Len."
"Everything takes a long time. Birthing takes nine months, and dying takes you all the rest of your life, and what are you complaining about, anyway?

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

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

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.

I thought they knew," Len said. "I thought they were sure of it."
"Research isn't done that way."
"But how can they spend all that time, and maybe that much more again, if they know it might be all for nothing?"
"Because how would they know if they didn't try? And because there isn't any other way to do it.

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.

No matter which way I go I know now that I will never have peace.
For peace is certainty, and there is no certainty but death.

But for today, yesterday, tomorrow, it is not important. Time goes on without any of us. Only a belief, a state of mind, endures, and even that changes constantly, but underneath there are two main kinds—the one that says, Here you must stop knowing, and the other which says, Learn.
Right or wrong, the fruit was eaten, and there can’t ever be a going back.
I have made my choice.

I guess we've got a lot to learn."
"Quite a lot," said Hostetter thoughtfully. "It won't be easy, either. So many things will jar against every belief you've grown up with, and I don't care how you scoff at it, some of it sticks to you.