Peter David

“Some time later, I sat in the wine cellar, staring at the walls while cradling a wineskin in my lap like a child, murmuring over and over as if lulling the child to sleep, 'I am shat upon. I am shat upon'.”

“That was when it was all made painfully clear to me. When you are a child, there is joy. There is laughter. And most of all, there is trust. Trust in your fellows. When you are an adult...then comes suspicion, hatred, and fear. If children ran the world, it would be a place of eternal bliss and cheer. Adults run the world; and there is war, and enmity, and destruction unending. Adults who take charge of things muck them up, and then produce a new generation of children and say, "The children are the hope of the future." And they are right. Children are the hope of the future. But adults are the damnation of the present, and children become adults as surely as adults become worm food. Adults are the death of hope.”

“Apropos, you're going to have to learn to sooner or later that you can't just let other people decide what the world around you should and shouldn't be.”

“I remember so many things [. . .] The problem is, only half of them are true . . . and the half which is true keeps changing places with the half which is false.”

“Not that he wanted to say that. It would make it sound as if he wanted to blame her..Women were very complicated creatures. He suddenly realised he was running through his head a list of everything he considered preferable to women. It was a long and most impressive imaginary document.”

“Running from horrors doesn't help. The only way to deal with them is to meet them head-on.”

“There are some for whom the good of mankind is their primary concern, and others who basically put their own considerations before everyone else. I was among the latter.”

“Youth believes itself immortal. There is a cure for such an attitude, but unfortunately it is a cure from which one never recovers.”

“...They are merely scars, not mortal wounds and you must use them to propel you forward.”

“All people are, at heart, egocentric. We exist at the center of our own little universes. We believe that we are living out our lives as best we can, and that we have our own sphere of influence which exists of both friends and enemies. They in turn have their own friends and enemies with whom they interact. That is a given. But we, each of us, tend to put ourselves ahead of others because we believe that we are significant. We must attend to our own needs, desires, wants, and aspirations, because each of us is our own greatest priority. No one else cares for us as much as we do, no one else can exist in our skin. We think we're important. It is where our sense of self-worth comes up, where our egos reside, where "we" are. And we believe that each of our lives means something.”

“To the brave crew and passengers of the Kobayshi Maru…sucks to be you.”

“In retrospect, I would have to recommend against epiphanies. They are difficult on an emotional level, and they also sometimes move you to foolish and inopportune acts, which was what happened in my case.”

“I guess it really had been brave . . . because it was so bugger-all stupid, and if there was one thing I'd come to realize, ti was that bravery and bugger-all stupidity went hand in hand.”

“Lack of movement is a formidable force to overcome.”

“It seemed to me that, no matter what endeavor I was involved in, I was to be something of a sham.”

“Unfortunately, the world does not always act in a manner consistent with one's plans for it.”

“A moment later the scowling face of Admiral Jellico appeared on the screen. He looked as ill-humored as ever. Privately, Calhoun felt that somebody should send an away team into Jellico's ass, to determine just what had crawled up there and died years ago.”

“The battered and pathetic thing that represented any claim to conscience I might have had turned away from me in disgust. Oddly, I couldn't blame it. I was disgusted myself. Disgusted at my weakness and my lack of resolution, at my refusal to see justice through in the name of the woman who had borne me.”

“If we can't alter the tide of events, at least we can be nearby with towels to mop up.”

“Once again I felt light-headed, but this time it wasn't from the scent of lilacs; it was from the scent of my own death.”