Vernor Vinge Quotes

If there be only hours, at least learn what there is time to learn.

It was not called the Net of a Million Lies for nothing.

Did you ever think? Old-fashioned writing is the ultimate in context tagging. It’s passive, informative, and present exactly where you need it.

“We think the governance has opted for ubiquitous law enforcement.”
Pham whistled softly. Now every embedded computing system, down to a child’s rattle, was a governance utility. It was the most extreme form of social control ever invented. “So now they have to run everything.” The notion was terribly seductive to the authoritarian mind.

I have come to kill you."
The death's heads shrugged. "You have come to try.

Over the last twenty years, the worldwide net had come to be a midden of bogus sites and recursive fraudulence…telling truth from fantasy was often the hardest thing about using the web.

There is a deepness in the sky, and it extends forever.

So what do you do when your dream dies?
When your dream dies, you give it up.

They’re very good at reaching nonsense conclusions from insufficient information.

Even as my conscious mind concluded that we were under fire, I threw myself on the ground and flatten into the lowest profile possible. You’ve heard the bromide about combat making life more real. I don’t know about that, but it’s certainly true that when you are flat against the ground with your face in the dirt, the whole universe looks different.

Some dreams take a long time in dying. Some get a last minute reprieve…and that can be even worse.

Viki was awed by all the incredible quackery. Daddy thought such things were amusing—“like religion but not so deadly.”

Life is a green madness just now, trying to squeeze the last bit of warmth from the season.

Peregrine Wickwrackrum was of two minds about evil: when enough rules get broken, sometimes there is good amid the carnage.

Sometimes terror and pain are not the best levers; deception, when it works, is the most elegant and least expensive manipulation of all.