Leigh Brackett Quotes

The Thyrans came on, as merciless as time.

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.

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.”

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.

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.”

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

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

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?

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

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

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.

Under the attentiveness was fear, and something else. Anger, hate—the instinctive rejection of an intolerable truth.