Mantrap
"I have. You see, I think I know what causes your mantrap: the refusal
to accept that the impossible is impossible, or the refusal to take
responsibility for what is possible. The people who get trapped do so
by seeking evidences of impotence or omnipotence, by believing either
that they are incompetent to deal with nature, or that nature is so
pliable that it must bend to their arbitrary whims."
From "Communion"
"Put the gleam back in your eyes and do something to your hair. Keep
your glow on. Babe Rainbow, oh. You gotta go on..." Her eyes
wistful, locked on a vision of her own, Margareta picked out the notes
of the chords individually, each ringing out with the heartbeat of a
being fighting for its life.
Janio at a Point
And this is what philosophy is for. The ideas we make with our
minds are tools first, the tools with which we make our lives...
They are not silly toys or priceless treasures to be locked up in some
dusty book. No, they are the very substance of our lives, The Truth
And The Glory And The Meaning And The Beauty And The Light of our
being. We are no more and no less than we have caused ourselves to
become, and where we find ourselves is where we pointed ourselves -
or failed to. It is with our ideas that we point our spirits and
bodies toward our values, and it is only by means of acting upon our
ideas that we can achieve our aims...
From "The Usurpers"
"Oh, yes, damnit! There on the slab was my daughter! Her silky blonde
hair was crusted with dried blood and she was bruised everywhere. She
was cut open from her breast bone to her crotch, and there were
obscenities written on her skin in blood. I looked at the cop, just to
look away, to look anywhere but at my little girl, my own flesh and
blood, killed just as good as by my own hand. He stared at me with
utter contempt. 'One of her thumbs is missing', he said. 'We looked all
over, but we couldn't find it...'"
Limitations
Uncle Hugh's house tells you a lot about him: it's two perfect
cubes, one stone, one glass. The stone house perches over North
Point; it holds all the living accommodations, including his
office. The glass house sits atop it, an immense park, with real
Earth-seed grass that Uncle Hugh got from the Hegemony, and
small trees, and a fish pond and a vegetable garden. Of the time
Uncle Hugh spends at home, he spends most of it in his garden.
He even sleeps there, in a lounger by the pond. Sometimes I
think the only reason my uncle works at all is to pay for his
park.
