Spider Robinson
55 quotes
Biography
Spider Robinson is an American-Canadian science fiction author. He has won a number of awards for his hard science fiction and humorous stories, including the Hugo Award 1977 and 1983, and another Hugo with his co-author and wife Jeanne Robinson in 1978.
"Sometimes I think I must have a Guardian Idiot. A little invisible spirit just behind my shoulder, looking out for me...only he's an imbecile."
"Librarians are the secret masters of the world. They control information. Don't ever piss one off."
"…when writing, always hook the reader with your first sentence…in love, never settle…value yourself first and this will help you to value others…life is short, so enjoy it to the fullest…everyone in the world is different, and that’s ok…"
"And there's this place called college! I mean, they want you to care, dig it, care about this education trip, and they don't care enough themselves to make it as attractive as the crap game across the street!"
"In 1971, after seven years in college, with that magic piece of paper clutched triumphantly in my fist, the best job I was able to get was night watchman on a sewer project in Babylon, N.Y. guarding a hole in the ground to prevent anyone from stealing it. God bless the American educational system!"
"Would he grow up to be Maker, Taker, or Faker?"
"Okay, I grant you the provisional status of human beings. Let’s deal."
"I mean, progress is something with no pity and no purpose. It just happens. It chews up all you ever knew and spits out things you can’t understand and the only value it seems to have is to make a few people a lot of money. What the hell is the sense of progress anyway?"
"“You know,” he said with a dangerous high note in his voice, “in all the nine years the prayers never stopped rising from that filthy little cell. For the first three years we prayed that someone would depose El Supremo. For approximately the next three years Mary prayed constantly that my faith in God would return. Then, for about a year I prayed to I-don’t-know-who that Mary would live. And after malaria took her, I spent my time praying to anyone who would listen for a chance to kill El Supremo with my own hands.”"
"She was pretty enough to make a preacher kick a hole in a stained-glass window."
"A man should live forever, or die trying."
"Tom said what struck him was how little progress churches have made in two hundred years toward convincing people that the unknown is not by definition evil."
"The prime datum of the Universe is that life survives by eating life, and no other way. The expense of eating is, in great part, the resistance the second life offers to being eaten."
"You humans are at least aware of that supreme paradox—that free will exists to an extent for the individual, but disappears in the group—although you can’t work with it."
"You can show a dozen guys murderin’ each other on TV but you can’t ever show two people making love. The naked blade is reckoned to be less obscene than a naked woman."
"Next morning I decided that hangovers are like sex—the second time isn’t quite as painful. If the analogy held, by tomorrow I’d be enjoying it."
"If we have to, we can all go to Hell together—maybe there’s a group rate."
"Shared pain is lessened; shared joy is increased; thus do we refute entropy."
"“To all the Callahan's Places there ever were or ever will be,” Spider Robinson says, “whatever they may be called—and to all the merry maniacs and happy fools who are fortunate enough to stumble into one: may none of them arrive too late!”"
"There are basically three kinds of prostitute: street hooker, call girl, and house whore. Each kind is convinced that the other two are the lowest of the low."
"This is a House of healthy repute—no sleaze, fleas or social disease."
"Lady Sally does not permit any kind of contempt here. Not even self-contempt. Maybe especially not self-contempt. Art with contempt in it is always sour."
"If you’ve lived a bad life, they send you to Hell. But if you’ve been truly wicked, they give you a tour of Heaven first…."
"Don’t waste time blaming the bull if you can’t make it moo."
"As the poet tells us: once a king, always a king—but once a night is often sufficient."