"Everybody knows that everybody dies. But not every day. Not today. Some days are special. Some days are so, so blessed. Some days, nobody dies at all. Now and then, every once in a very long while, every day in a million days, when the wind stands fair and the Doctor comes to call, everybody lives.”
“The only reason people die, is because EVERYONE does it. You all just go along with it.
It’s RUBBISH, death. It’s STUPID. I don’t want nothing to do with it.”
I’m going on that camping trip, and I’m going to have a near-death experience if it kills me… I have to perch on the teeth of death in order to stare down onto the tonsils of enlightenment.
I walked out a little way, past a couple of the lakes, almost expecting to see something under the surface. Dead bodies, maybe. I’d seen plenty of those (and caused plenty of those) on past contracts, but this one had been dead-body-lacking, so far. It made for a nice change.
Then he turned and headed straight for home, but he took the long way, around the world.
For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much — the wheel, New York, wars and so on — whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man — for precisely the same reasons.
He had worked hard to convince the Council that it would be an important gesture to appoint a few Stenos to positions of responsibility on the first dolphin-crewed starship.
Even after two separate years of enforced togetherness they were, like any other human group, no more than a collection of strangers.
Whenever there’s something I don’t like about a stranger, I try to imagine that someone out there loves them, and it puts them in a different light.
Most neuroses and some psychoses can be traced to the unnecessary and unhealthy habit of daily wallowing in the troubles and sins of five billion strangers.
The truth is a stranger not always welcome by daylight.
Money is truthful. If a man speaks of his honor, make him pay cash.
Time travelers strictly cash.
“Are you done briefing the company yet?”
“We, um… haven’t gotten through introductions yet.”
"Allow me: Time-traveling Kevyn Andreyasn, this is the mercenary company “Tagon’s Toughs.”
“Company, this is the time-travelling Kevyn Andreyasn, who will have become your captain thirty-two hours from now, as of seven weeks ago…Now quick. Let’s go save the galaxy while they’re confused.”
“I need your help with my time machine,” she interrupted then stalked back into the house.
Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.
“This is a glossary,” Portnov said, slightly less annoyed. “It is organized in layers. It has five dimensions. That means that you, with your measly experience, will be periodically thrown into the irrational ‘pockets,’ with the possibility of time loops. Should you be afraid of that? No. Is it dangerous? Yes! To avoid burning like a matchstick, you must take the greatest possible care in following the rules I am about to tell you.”
If one can travel through time, fate needn’t be absolute.
The only possible explanation was a transposition in time as well as space. Tapper was a junior biologist. His budding career would be ruined if he advanced his suspicions without evidence. And there could be no evidence, if he was right. Whatever remained of the area of West Virginia which had vanished was lost somewhere back in time.
My time machine has a built in armament system.