"George, it's impossible to correct a defective reality-orientation overnight."
"You don't speak of dreams as unreal. They exist. They leave a mark behind them."
"He seemed not to know the uses of silence."
"The doctor was not, he thought, really sure that anyone else existed, and wanted to prove they did by helping them."
"Those whom heaven helps we call the sons of heaven. They do not learn this by learning. They do not work it by working. They do not reason it by using reason. To let understanding stop at what cannot be understood is a high attainment. Those who cannot do it will be destroyed on the lathe of heaven. —Chuang Tse: XXIII"
"She could not have been born gray. Hercolor, her color of brown, was an essential part of her, not an accident. Her anger, timidity, brashness, gentleness, all were elements of her mixed being, her mixednature, dark and clear right through, like Baltic amber. She could not exist in the gray people's world. She had not been born."
"A machine is more blameless, more sinless even than any animal. It has no intentions whatsoever but our own."
"«I am tired,» he said. «I did a lot today. That is, I did something. The only thing I have ever done. I pressed a button. It took the entire will power, the accumulated strength of my entire existence, to press one damned OFF button.»«You have lived well,» the Alien said."
"I have this, this gift, I know that; and I know my obligation to it."
"Orr slept. He dreamed. There was no rub."
"Things don't have purposes, as if the universe were a machine, where every part has a useful function. What's the function of a galaxy? I don't know if our life has a purpose and I don't see that it matters. What does matter is that we're a part. Like a thread in a cloth or a grass-blade in a field. It is and we are. What we do is like wind blowing on the grass."