Top 88 Karen Traviss Quotes
#2. I know genes are a big deal, son, but they're not the be-all and end-all." Rob slowed to a halt at the lights, wishing the dickhead behind would back off. "If they were, you'd be in a seafood salad and I'd be in prison.
Karen Traviss
#3. Hope was evil. It seduced you, then it dropped you on your ass so hard and so fast that you were worse off than when you started.
Karen Traviss
#4. The art of storytelling is in development, not fact sheets. There are posts you have to hammer into the ground from the start just to get going, but if they don't hold up the house you build, you can change them or take them out.
Karen Traviss
#5. Humans would never tell the simple truth when a lie was available ...
Karen Traviss
#6. Life was a trade-off between loneliness and inevitable peaks of joy or agony.
Karen Traviss
#7. Recreating the experience of, say, bereavement in my own head is pretty rough. I was used to switching off from emotions every day of my working life as a journalist, but in fiction, you have to feel it 100%, or else it's a flat experience for the reader.
Karen Traviss
#8. Games are getting more interesting. I mean, when we talk about books, they can be anything from a summer blockbuster to 'War and Peace' - well, games are the same. I think the creative side is catching up with the technology.
Karen Traviss
#9. And the maximum number extracted. You know what your bosses say about attachment, littl'un. Don't get too attached to me.
Karen Traviss
#10. Humans don't connect their actions with what befalls them. Don't they perceive time as linear?"
"They do," said Aitassi. "They just don't see why they should do anything individually to change their future to the one they want. All eight billion of them.
Karen Traviss
#11. I bet you were a Boy Scout."
"You are incomprehensible."
"It's just a compliment.
Karen Traviss
#12. And nobody has the right to judge a soldier from the warmth and safety of their armchair.
Karen Traviss
#13. It never ceased to amaze Skirata how much simpler it was to buy and sell death than it was to pay taxes.
Karen Traviss
#14. People who wouldn't dream of drowning a puppy in a barrel full of water think nothing of killing a fish the same slow way.
Karen Traviss
#15. My books deliberately provide no answers or messages. I'm drilled in the habit of objectivity and also aware that the steady drip of fiction has more power than facts to shape opinion, so I handle it with caution.
Karen Traviss
#17. I don't know who the good guys are anymore. But I do know what the enemy is. It's the compromise of principles. You lose the war when you lose your principles. And the first principle is to look out for your comrades.
Karen Traviss
#18. All the things worth writing about are outside me. I'm a lens, not a source. And even if it's not always a comfortable journey, it's always a stimulating one.
Karen Traviss
#19. We have complete choice as individuals: the only decisions we can take are our own. And yet so many species use the state of being an individual as an excuse for inaction, helplessness and irresponsibility.No situation is so overwhelming that action is pointless.
Targassat of Surang.
Karen Traviss
#20. As a writer, I have a moral deal with you, the reader - if I hook you with a story, my part of the deal is to follow through and give you a satisfying outcome.
Karen Traviss
#21. Why doesn't the fact that I'm human matter to human beings
Karen Traviss
#22. Success is everyone's child. Failure is an orphan." Omas smiled ruefully.
Karen Traviss
#23. I'd probably play games obsessively if I didn't write, although I admit I don't read novels partly because I don't enjoy it, not just because it's the wrong side of the creator-consumer barrier for me. I'm a visual writer. I think in moving 3D images and write down what I observe.
Karen Traviss
#24. anything that was aware of its actions was capable of making choices about them.
Karen Traviss
#25. I tell you this: think what you like, hate who you like, because that's between you and God, but you will act as the community requires, or the community will no longer require you.
Karen Traviss
#27. If you take a shot at someone, you keep firing until they can no longer return fire. Wound them, and you have an angry enemy who knows your position.
Karen Traviss
#28. Humans have too many rights and not enough responsibilities.
-Aras
Karen Traviss
#29. I do still read comics since I started writing for DC, but nowhere near as much as I used to, and I'm finding now that it's becoming harder to read comics as a consumer, so I think I'll have to make the call there and stop reading them.
Karen Traviss
#30. Real evil wasn't about bending the law to suit justice: evil was acting out of small, intensely personal expedience and losing sight of the bigger picture so often that you never got it back again.
Karen Traviss
#31. Covering his tracks by randomizing his route back to the apartment had become routine for Skirata now, which was a bizarre irony in itself.
Karen Traviss
#32. The trouble with taking away the certainty of evil was that its vacuum was filled by all kinds of more nebulous threats, rivalries, and feuds. It became increasingly difficult to judge where the threat was coming from.
Karen Traviss
#33. A novel can do something that films and TV usually can't - a glimpse inside the characters' heads. I write very tight third person point of view, so the reader is right behind the eyes of each character, seeing what they see and feeling what they feel.
Karen Traviss
#34. killed in a way I didn't think I ever could. I'm appalled at what I can do. I don't enjoy this." "If you enjoyed it, Jacen, you would not be the one destined to become the Sith Lord." The
Karen Traviss
#35. The best way to stop worrying about your inevitable demise is to dwell on it morbidly until you're so bored that you forget it.
Karen Traviss
#36. Nowhere does it say free speech is carte blanche to be a jerk. And don't cheapen real free speech by hijacking an honourable concept bought dearly with people's lives just to get a little spotlight. Spotlights run hot, and they can burn.
Karen Traviss
#37. The biggest battles in human history can only ever be seen through the eyes of the bloke on the front line, and that's by definition a very focused view and one that will vary from individual to individual.
Karen Traviss
#38. Any sign of what killed him, Scorch?"
"Let's ask Sev. He's a dead-body-ologist."
[Sev examines the body and its arm falls off]
"Yep, he's dead alright."
"Sure you don't want a second opinion, Doc?"
"Nah, I'm ready go out on a limb.
Karen Traviss
#39. I'm a visual person - when I write, my input is always visual. I worked in television for several years.
Karen Traviss
#40. Humans believed they thought things consciously when most of the time they were simply rationalizing instinctive reactions as basic as the amoeba's, and after those reactions had already taken place.
Karen Traviss
#42. If we don't stand up for others, who will be left to stand up for us?
Karen Traviss
#43. The Engineer began dismantling the helmet at a breakneck speed, stacking the components - faceplate, lining, mikes, data processor, even microfans - on the nearest flat surface, a hydroplane-like structure on a small vessel.
Karen Traviss
#44. I don't mind being shot at. It's having a government that lies to me that I hate.
Karen Traviss
#45. Every miracle's got a mundane explanation. [ ... ] and you can choose - you can look at the wonderous surface or you can look at the crud beneath. I want to see the wondrous, believe me. I just know it isn't going to be there when I've finished looking.
Karen Traviss
#46. Sev, feeling embarrassed by his reaction, examined the bones. The left arm came off in his hand. "Yep, he's dead all right." Scorch sucked his teeth noisily. It was extra-amplified in the scuba trooper helmets. "Sure you don't want a second opinion, Doc?" "Nah, I'm prepared to go out on a limb.
Karen Traviss
#47. I shouldn't have to do the foot-soldier work, Tahiri. Be my eyes and ears. I'd hate to have to use ch'hala trees. You're smarter than a tree
aren't you?
Darth Caedus to Tahiri Veila
Karen Traviss
#48. Family took a lot more than genes to hold it together
Karen Traviss
#49. You think she's got a personality disorder?"
"No, she's just a nasty bitch. An unpleasant personality isn't a medical condition. Just a symptom of not being slapped around the head enough.
Karen Traviss
#50. People lose it when I say this, but I'm a novelist who doesn't read novels. There are lots of good reasons for not reading novels! I'm also a game writer who doesn't play games - I keep everything very separate. The only crossover with me is comics. I write them, and I read them passionately.
Karen Traviss
#51. We have an understanding. I don't laugh at his skirt, and he doesn't rip my head off.
-Fi Skirata
Karen Traviss
#52. Revenge might give you a warm feeling, but unless it delivers some lasting results you might as well have a nice cup of mocha instead.
Karen Traviss
#53. So you want a knife, a nice sharp knife. You hone that blade to its limits. It even cuts through stone when you want it to. It saves your life. And then you're outraged when it cuts you accidentally. You see, knives don't switch off. And neither do people, not when you hone them to a fine edge.
Karen Traviss
#54. If you go back and look at the early promos for Gears 1, you'll see just how different the characters were from the actual first game, both in appearance and background. And it's an evolutionary process.
Karen Traviss
#55. I'm still an old-school reporter at heart. Writing fiction satisfies my journalistic need to hear and relay the testimony of everyday people at the center of events.
Karen Traviss
#56. G.I. Joe has a heart and an attitude that feels right and familiar to me, so they could have ray guns, and they'd still feel more like real troops than many other franchises.
Karen Traviss
#58. It was as if the small differences mattered more than the really big ones - like you had to recognize something before you could hate it properly. No
Karen Traviss
#59. When wars end, all the shit comes tumbling out. People talk, point fingers at each other, reveal things they've kept quiet for years.
Karen Traviss
#60. Maze: "I'm alerting HQ. Stand by."
*on the private comlink*
Corr: "How are you Omega? Can we help? We're really concerned that you're stranded on a shabla rock surrounded by an infinite number of natives who'll cut your gett'se off when they haul you screaming from the summit.
Karen Traviss
#61. Characters have changed my mind about some very fundamental moral issues, and that's the real satisfaction in the way I write - the ultimate learning experience.
Karen Traviss
#62. We're all going to die sometime, so you might as well die pushing the odds for something that matters.
Karen Traviss
#63. All ships ... we are now at battle stations. I expect this will now be known as the Second Battle of Fondor.
Karen Traviss
#64. Gar taldin ni jaonyc; gar sa buir, ori'wadaasla. (Nobody cares who your father was, only the father you'll be.) - Mandalorian saying
Karen Traviss
#65. And knowing my luck ... that'll be the Engineer sign for Your mom's a skank.
Karen Traviss
#66. If you can't take a joke, you shouldn't have joined.
Karen Traviss
#67. Writing is like a rollercoaster ride for me, an adventure. I love exploring the world through 'playing' people who are absolutely nothing like me.
Karen Traviss
#68. In this job, you handpick your people. You need the best. You need the most loyal. You need the most ruthless.
Karen Traviss
#69. Ugliness is an illusion, gentlemen. Like beauty. Like color. All depends on the light. The only reality is action.
Karen Traviss
#70. Let's revise the old adage for our times. All that it requires for evil to succeed is that enough lazy, stupid bastards believe everything they're told.
Karen Traviss
#71. Hatred can be pushed aside, but it will always whisper in your ear.
Karen Traviss
#74. Regular people said they couldn't tell the difference between one clone and another, did they? That was what came of spending too much time looking at faces and not enough wondering what shaped people and went on inside their heads.
Karen Traviss
#75. That's how tyranny succeeds. When folks think it won't affect them until eventually it does.
Karen Traviss
#76. They had both been raised in complete isolation from the everyday world, with their own set of values and disciplines, not because they had been chosen to be different but because they had been born that way. Their calling was random, genetic - unfair.
Karen Traviss
#77. I still have a lot of military contacts, and friends and readers who've served or are serving, and they react really strongly to G.I. Joe. I've lost count of the number who've said, 'Oh, I just loved it as a kid. I had all the figures; it really made me think.'
Karen Traviss
#78. I refuse to believe that gods want to make mortals unhappy and torment them. That's what humans do. And humans are very definitely not divine.
Karen Traviss
#79. I fail to understand why gethes (Humans), talk about individuals versus society. They are the same thing. The action of every individual counts, and those individual acts of personal responsibility accumulate to create society. Snowflakes are equally blind to their role in causing avalanches.
Karen Traviss
#80. Diplomacy is about dealing with those you rather avoid.
Karen Traviss
#81. Is it better to not get to know them?' 'No. It's not. It's sharking your responsibility, and it's disrespectful. Get to know them, and then you fully understand the price you're asking them to pay.
Karen Traviss
#82. The ambition of most beings is just to stay alive, overeat, spend too much, and avoid hard work. I'm happy that I can achieve much more than that ... and we all die sooner or later. A death in service of a great ideal is a fine thing.
Karen Traviss
#83. Scorch: "I think Sev might have an anger problem."
Sev: "I think you have an intelligence problem.
Karen Traviss
#84. MARK DONALDSON WAY, SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA: AUSTRALIA DAY, TWO MONTHS AFTER THE BATTLE OF EARTH, JANUARY 26, 2553.
Karen Traviss
#85. Think of yourselves as a hand. Each of you is a finger, and without the others you're useless. Alone, a finger can't grasp, or control, or form a fist. You are nothing on your own, and everything together.
Karen Traviss
#86. If you're not prepared to do something in public, don't do it at all.
Karen Traviss
#87. I wish you'd get one thing straight - I'm not a traitor. I was never on your side. I'm called the enemy.
Karen Traviss
#88. Somehow, though, they managed to ignore the fact that being the dominant species on Earth meant that absolutely nothing about their position was inevitable or beyond their control.
Karen Traviss
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