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.

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.

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.

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.

I am finished with running. Now I will stop and choose my way.
Sooner or later a man has to stop and choose his way, not out of the ways he would like there to be, or the ways there ought to be, but out of the ways there are.

The Thyrans came on, as merciless as time.

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.

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

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

Will it always stay like this?"
"Nothing," said Hostetter, "ever stays always like anything.

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.

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?

I can’t tell you if the stories are true. Men lie without meaning to. They talk as if they had been part of a thing that happened to someone they never knew and only heard of by sixth remove.