David Zindell
American science fiction and fantasy author with a degree in mathematics.
All men are warriors. And life for everything in our universe is nothing but war.
I am not interested in things getting better; what I want is more: more human beings, more dreams, more history, more consciousness, more suffering, more joy, more disease, more agony, more rapture, more evolution, more life.
For war is never some cosmic accident descending upon a people with all the chance and inevitability of asteroids falling like fire out of the heavens, but only the will and work of man.
Any robot sufficiently intelligent to clean dishes is too intelligent to clean dishes.
Before, you are wise; after, you are wise. In between you are otherwise.
In an infinite universe, every point in space-time is the center.
The universe is a womb for the genesis of gods.
Poems are the dreams of the universe crystallized in words.
Faith — what is this emotion but a desperate attempt to escape from mind-burning fear?
That was the true terror of war, that often one had to accept danger and simply wait to live or die.
A man lusts to become a god ... and there is murder. Murder upon murder upon murder. Why is the world of men nothing but murder?
The secret of life is more life.
You must remember that an oak tree is not a crime against the acorn.
But it is the nature of life that no emotion is meant to last forever...
Do you want to know the secret of life? Bardo will tell you the secret of life: it's not the amount of time we have, despite what I've just said. No it's not quantity and it's not even quality. It's variety.
In time, the heart of each religion grows hard and dies. And so seekers of the godly will always turn to new prophets and new ways, never realizing that, ultimately, all religions separate man from God.
Oh, where does the light go when the light goes out? (p88)
The elite of the universal religions have always substituted belief in the Infinite for the experience of it. We all need God — but only in small and measured doses. Who can look upon the burning bush and not be destroyed in its flames? Who can bear the heaven and hell of each moment blazing in time? Who can shine like a star? And so, for all but a few of the manswarm, the rare ones who are truly human, it is better to glimpse such a miracle through a dark glass or to grasp it through words only.
What's beautiful is that a creator can be astonished by his own creations.
If the brain were so simple we could understand it, we would be so simple we couldn't.