Michael Bishop Quotes

Time, as it always does, passed.

Paleoanthropologists were congenitally media-oriented.

The vitality of children is clean and honest. Their petty shortcomings derive, in ninety-nine out of a hundred instances, from their effete elders’ pettiness. Contagion is a generational fact. But children can develop defenses against their elders’ spiritual scurvy simply because they’re new.

Necessary is often the mother of light fingers instead of invention.

His foot always got caught in that wide, loose stirrup: his mouth.

Tiglathpileser was a human, it’s rumored. And Caligula. So were a whole host of twentieth-century tyrants. So presumably were the brain-dead idiots who turned the Earth into a treeless detention camp. Being human, I’m afraid, doesn’t automatically confer demigod status on anyone.

Nature has its own logic, or so brother Peter tells us.
"The logic of chance—amoral and sometimes inaccurate."
"Well, Foutlif, we Earthmen are products of the 'natural' process; consequently, you shouldn't be surprised to find us both of those things at times—amoral and inaccurate.

Like all such prophecies, it’s impressive only if not examined too closely.

What was reprehensible in being fearful in the presence of the unknown?

They had both changed in eight years, eroded or subtly augmented by the sweep of time’s river.

Don’t look for reason where it’s never been practiced.

He forgave these Tropemen, then felt contempt for himself for the presumption of extending forgiveness, then forgave again, then cursed his own vanity, forgave once more, condemned his presumption, and at last forgave even himself.

What motivates you, then? Please don’t tell me altruism. I am not quite so gullible as that.

The True Word. Once every quarter, once every new-style month, I preach it.
"The True Word on what? Everybody's got his own true word, you know."
"On how not to die, woman. The basis of every religion."
"No," Zoe said. Not every one of them; just the ones that don't know exactly what to do with the here-and-now.

Do you expect even dreams to unravel rationally, Kahl Balduin? Must each event have a precise, empirical cause?
"No, not if you're narrating a dream. But if you claim, like the Pledgeson, that your visions and reality are the same thing, then, yes I expect consistency. I'm too old for pointless fairy tales.