John Varley Quotes

#1. No matter how tough you think you are, thought you were, you haven't been around long enough to be tested in many, many ways.

John Varley

#2. We both had to reject the concept of life after death, even if we weren't brought up to believe in it, because all human cultures are steeped in the idea.

John Varley

#3. If she must face the fact that she was fearful, she would also face the fear and overcome it.

John Varley

#4. She knew for a fact, for instance, that what the Polo sisters did behind the closed doors of their adjoining rooms was still illegal in Alabama.

John Varley

#5. She grew into a quiet, beautiful young woman. The beauty was a nuisance, like smog and poverty.

John Varley

#6. They eat the sewage that floats on the surface of the mass culture, digest it, and then get creative diarrhea
all at once. The turd look and smell exactly alike, and we call them this year's fashions, hit shows, books, and movies.

John Varley

#7. How heavy is that day in the mountains when you built a campfire and saw a shooting star? What is the mass of yesterday? How fast is love?

John Varley

#8. Yes, but what is it good for? What does it mean?" Her look was full of pity. "If you have to ask that question, you wouldn't understand the answer.

John Varley

#9. All in all, it was the goldarndest, Barnum-and-Baileyest, rib-stickinest, rough-and-tumblest infernal foofaraw of a media circus anybody had seen since grandpaw chased the possum down the road and lost his store teeth, and I was heartily sorry to have been a part of it.

John Varley

#10. Bill's tongue had started at Cirocco's toes and was now exploring her left ear. She liked that. It had been a memorable journey.

John Varley

#11. The English language was a delight to them, so illogical and fertile and well-suited to their natural desire to confuse, obfuscate, and generally side-step clear meaning whenever possible.

John Varley

#12. A toast! To the road! May it lead to adventure and carry us safely back home.

John Varley

#13. There were millions of Earth men and women who bought the Earth cultures big lies, and they died just as unhappy as you are now. And I suggest to you that it's a foolish thing.

John Varley

#14. Draw your own moral from this, Sparky. And remember at the center of the cult of personality called stardom there is just a big empty hole. Awards don't matter. Acclaim doesn't matter. Only your craft matters.

John Varley

#15. But I don't believe in heroes anymore. I just believe in people coping with their lives as best they can. You do what you have to do, and in some ways you have no more choice about it than a rock has about falling from a high place.

John Varley

#16. Cirocco liked space, reading, and sex, not necessarily in that order. She had never been able to satisfactorily combine all three, but two was not bad.

John Varley

#17. I had thought Chicago was inevitable, like diarrhea.

John Varley

#18. If it's not worth making beautiful," Valiha said, "it's not worth making.

John Varley