Nancy Kress Quotes

• “…Boredom [is] a moral failing, the mark of a mind insufficiently stocked to occupy itself.”

  Nancy Kress

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• “You think intelligence and grit can succeed by themselves, but I'm telling you that's a pretty illusion.”

  Nancy Kress

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• “You must learn to be three people at once: writer, character, and reader.”

  Nancy Kress

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• “Miri once told me that there were only four important ques­tions you could ask about any human being: How does he fill up his time? How does he feel about how he fills up his time? What does he love? How does he react to those he perceives as either inferior or superior to him?
  
  If you make people feel inferior, even unintentionally," she had said, her dark eyes intense, "they will be uncomfortable around you. In that situation, some people will attack. Some will ridicule, to 'cut you down to size.' But some will admire, and learn from you. If you make people feel superior, some will react by dis­missing you. Some by wielding power — just because they can — in greater or lesser ways. But some will be moved to protect and help. All this is just as true of a junior lodge clique as of a group of governments.”

  Nancy Kress

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• “Where did the bonds of maternity end? All children grew up, changed, became somebody else. Parents who trembled that they might lose a gap-toothed toddler to some terrible accident ended up losing him anyway, always, to time. The toddlers died, after all, and what was left was a bond with another adult, who had once been the beloved child.”

  Nancy Kress

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• “Things got said, the kinds of embarrassing things that don't go away. Tempers ran high. My paternal grandfather's teak desk required a new panel, which never quite matched the others. Intellectual debate can be very hard on furniture.”

  Nancy Kress

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• “Anything said in upper-crust British automatically sounded intelligent.”

  Nancy Kress

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• “A good end cannot sanctify evil means, nor must we ever do evil that good may come of it.”

  Nancy Kress

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• “The strings in her mind grew flatter, calmer. The shapes in the hologrid had changed. She heard the man's words, and yet she didn't; the words were not what was really important. And wasn't that right? Words had never been important, only strings, and the strings had shapes like - but not like -the ones around the man. Only the man had disappeared, too, and that was alright, because she, Miri, Miranda Serena Sharifi, was disappearing, was sliding down a steep long chute and each meter she traveled she became smaller and smaller until she had disappeared and was invisible, a weightless transparent ghost that neither twitched nor stammered, in the corner of a room she had never seen before.”

  Nancy Kress

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• “Throw enough scientific gibberish at non-scientists and they always faltered.”

  Nancy Kress

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• “Trust in God was a great excuse for sloth and lack of planning.”

  Nancy Kress

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• “We writers want readers to love our books. Greedy people that we are, we mean all readers. But in our more rational moments, we know that there is no book written that every reader enjoys. This is because people read for different reasons. Some readers want fast-paced excitement—and will put down a slower-paced book that examines the same reality as their own lives. Others want thoughtful insights into reality—and will put down fantasies of nonstop adventure. Some want to read about people they can identify with, some about characters they will never meet. Some seek clear, straightforward storytelling, and some cherish style: the unexpected phrase in exactly the right place. Some want affirmations of values they already hold, and some hope to be challenged, even disturbed. It’s”

  Nancy Kress

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• “It was always the conscientious, hard-working ones, Shipley thought, who were the most vulnerable. The people who cared. Those who didn’t care, who just wanted to get through the job or the day or the hour and to hell with everyone who didn’t like it – those people were protected from shame by their own indifference.”

  Nancy Kress

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• “No races, few permitted variant alleles. Anything else arouses hostility,”

  Nancy Kress

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• “World-wide warming moved tropical diseases into northern areas which had no defenses against them.”

  Nancy Kress

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• “grandiose paranoid schizophrenia.”

  Nancy Kress

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• “There have always been haters, Stewart. Hate Jews, hate Blacks, hate immigrants, hate Yagaiists who have more initiative and dignity than you do. I'm just the latest object of hatred. It's not new, it's not remarkable. It doesn't mean any basic kind of schism between the Sleepless and Sleepers.”

  Nancy Kress

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• “It was funny in a way, but only in the unhumorous way anything recent was funny. In another 80 years, maybe she would find it hilarious.”

  Nancy Kress

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• “The CEO of Monsanto had been disemboweled alive.”

  Nancy Kress

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• “The art of fiction, like the art of stage magicians, is one of directing the audience's attention to what you want them to see.”

  Nancy Kress

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• “But children disappeared all the time,”

  Nancy Kress

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• “...neither of them has yet learned to accept hard necessity without making it worse by regret. That's a vital lesson, Miri. Regret is not productive. Nor is guilt, nor grief.”

  Nancy Kress

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• “Religions—most of them, anyway—had promoted self-effacement, sacrifice, restraint.”

  Nancy Kress

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• “flop-transition”

  Nancy Kress

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• “Hausdorff dimension”

  Nancy Kress

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