Top 43 Quotes & Sayings by Joan D. Vinge

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.

These days too many of us seem inclined to cover our ears, close our eyes, and blindly follow the most narrow, conservative tenets of religion; or else seek comfort in the ancient traditions of New Age ritual.

I was thinking about what I wanted to write next, after my first novel, and had decided that I wanted to write a story with a lot of strong female characters in it.

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.

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?

Here was a fragment of Goddess myth that, through all its permutations, had somehow escaped being turned on its head. It was the perfect springboard for the sort of novel I wanted to write.

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

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.

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.

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

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

Probably I chose immortality because mortality is a universal human obsession.

The mers were also designed to reproduce only at long intervals, in order to maintain the natural balance of the environment in which they were placed.

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

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.

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.

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

I wanted to show those characters discovering it is possible to find common ground, as they make their way through a plotline that I hope is engrossing enough to keep the reader a willing participant.

There's no such thing as a free lunch, at least on the karmic level.

Humans are upsetting a fragile balance that their own human ancestors established.

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.

Fear of the unknown is a terrible fear.

What does immortality mean to me? That we all want more time; and we want it to be quality time.

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.

Myth is, after all, the neverending story.

Moon is also a naive native girl when she sets out for Carbuncle.

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.

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.

To be alive was to be disappointed. You tried and failed and kept on trying, never knowing whether you'd ever get what you wanted. But sometimes we get what we need.

Life scars us with its random motion, he thought. Only death is perfect.

Real power is control. Knowing that you can do anything...and not doing it only because you can.

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

There's more to me, more to the universe, than I suspected. Room for all the dreams I ever had, and all the nightmares...heroes in the gutters and in the mirror; saints in the frozen wasteland; fools and liars on the throne of wisdom, and hands reaching out in hunger that will never be filled.

Theres no such thing as a free lunch, at least on the karmic level.

Don't worry. You're safe now. You've got nothing left to steal.

But what force in the galaxy is stronger than she is?" "Indifference." Jerusha surprised herself with the answer. "Indifference, Gundhalinu, is the strongest force in the universe. It makes everything it touches meaningless. Love and hate don't stand a chance against it. It lets neglect and decay and monstrous injustice go unchecked. It doesn't act, it allows. And that's what gives it so much power.

These days too many of us seem inclined to cover our ears, close our eyes, and blindly follow the most narrow, conservative tenets of religion or else seek comfort in the ancient traditions of New Age ritual.

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

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

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

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

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