Joan D. Vinge Quotes

In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is stoned to death.

Indifference is the strongest force in the universe. It makes everything it touches meaningless. Love and hate don't stand a chance against it.

For every path you choose, there is another you must abandon, usually forever.

Throughout the ages, stories with certain basic themes have recurred over and over, in widely disparate cultures; emerging like the goddess Venus from the sea of our unconscious.

A clear conscience is generally the result of a faulty memory, not a faulty life.

Studying anthropology, I developed a kind of holistic view of human existence, in which the dichotomies you listed are all necessary and vital aspects of life.

We are all born with a unique genetic blueprint, which lays out the basic characteristics of our personality as well as our physical health and appearance... And yet, we all know that life experiences do change us.

Humans may be the only creatures on Earth who spend significant time thinking about the fact that someday their lives will end.

Everything born has to die, in order to make room for the future.

Fear of the unknown is a terrible fear.

Each time, storytellers clothed the naked body of the myth in their own traditions, so that listeners could relate more easily to its deeper meaning.

The contradictions are what make human behavior so maddening and yet so fascinating, all at the same time.

Besides, wouldn't it be wonderful if no one ever had to worry about the random cruelty of fatal illness or the woes of old age attacking them or their loved ones?

Myth is, after all, the neverending story.

Archaeology is the anthropology of the past, and science fiction is the anthropology of the future.

It doesn't matter. I'm not asking forever of you...just let me love you now.

But our society does not grant nontraditional forms of intelligence equal recognition, no matter how much it would help us get along or truly enrich our lives.

All [people] are intolerant.... Only they're intolerant of different things.

The futures and ultimate fates of the characters in The Snow Queen are profoundly changed by choices made in their own minds or hearts, as well as choices unexpectedly forced on them by things beyond their control.

Beyond that, I seem to be compelled to write science fiction, rather than fantasy or mysteries or some other genre more likely to climb onto bestseller lists even though I enjoy reading a wide variety of literature, both fiction and nonfiction.

What I do not want to write is didactic political tracts.

As for the historical inspirations I drew on in writing The Snow Queen, I suppose I would call them more cross-cultural inspirations, though they frequently involve past societies as well as present day ones.

And so The Snow Queen also became a story about the need to seek equilibrium, in our own lives, with the natural world, even within the universe at large.

The ecosystem of our world is a closed system: it would run out of gas, collapse of its own weight.

Perhaps the thing that makes humans truly unique on Earth is that we are never satisfied with our situation; maybe that is what's taken us so far.