I would confront the thieves, I thought, and the self-evident justice of my case would cause them to crumble before me. I don't know why I expected such extravagant results from the application of mere justice. That kind of calculation is seldom borne out by worldly events.

Robert Charles Wilson

This would have been less annoying had it been untrue.

Robert Charles Wilson

untrue has-beens annoying

We spent a lot of time discussing cosmology first. I think that was your father's unique way of evaluating people. You can tell a lot about a person, he once said, by the way they look at the stars.

Robert Charles Wilson

stars unique father

To fire a bullet into the heart or brains of one's fellow man even a fellow man striving to do the same to you creates what might be called an unassimilable memory: a memory that floats on daily life the way an oil stain floats on rainwater. Stir the rain barrel, scatter the oil into countless drops, disperse it all you like, but it will not mix; and eventually the slick comes back, as loathsomely intact as it ever was.

Robert Charles Wilson

rain heart memories

Goddamn you," Jacob said. "There's no damnation, Jacob. No Heaven but the forest and no God but the hive.

Robert Charles Wilson

damnation forests heaven

We live in an enlightened age, however, an age that has learned to see and to value other living things as they are, not as we wish them to be. And the long and creditable history of science has taught us, if nothing else, to look carefully before we judge to judge, if we must, based on what we see, not what we would prefer to believe.

Robert Charles Wilson

taught-us long believe

Personally, I don't believe in anything more supernatural than what you read about in the Bible, and I only believe that one day out of seven.

Robert Charles Wilson

seven one-day believe

[There was] only one news channel, overseen by a bland and complexly multicultural board of advisors. It broadcast in fifteen languages and was, as a rule, interesting in none of them.

Robert Charles Wilson

news boards interesting

We'll do what life always does defy expectations.

Robert Charles Wilson

expectations doe

I don't believe money is evil, but it can be terribly corrosive.

Robert Charles Wilson

dont-believe evil believe

It was the kind of experience, Molly said, that would grow calluses on an angel's ass.

Robert Charles Wilson

ass angel kind

The suicidally disgruntled were legion, And their enemies included any and all Americans, Brits, Canadians, Danes, et cetera; or, conversely, all Moslems, dark-skinned people, non-English-speakers, immigrants; all Catholics, fundamentalists, atheists; all liberals, all conservatives...For such people the consummate act of moral clarity was a lynching or a suicide bombing, a fatwa or a pogrom. And they were ascendant now, rising like dark stars over a terminal landscape.

Robert Charles Wilson

stars atheist suicide

One doesn't have to understand in order to look. One has to look, in order to understand.

Robert Charles Wilson

order looks

I understand so very little. But I am not afraid to look: I am a good observer at last. My eyes are open, and I am not afraid.

Robert Charles Wilson

eye littles looks

Promises were like bad checks, easy to write and hard to cash.

Robert Charles Wilson

cash writing promise

I suppose every decade gets the music it deserves.

Robert Charles Wilson

decades deserve

The Dutch at close proximity looked much like Americans, apart from their peculiar uniforms, and so it was their uniforms I fired at, half convinced that I was killing, not human beings, but enemy costumes, which had borne their contents here from a distant land; and if some living man suffered for his enslavement to the uniform, or was penetrated by the bullets aimed at it well, that was unavoidable, and the fault couldn't be placed at my feet. The private charade was not equivalent to Courage, but it enabled a Callousness that served a similar purpose.

Robert Charles Wilson

land feet men

Some pious men may find this truth unorthodox and bitter: But Nature, Chance, and Time ensure survival of the fitter!

Robert Charles Wilson

unorthodox survival men

Some things are taken away from you, some you leave behind and some you carry with you, world without end.

Robert Charles Wilson

taken ends world

If I am an agnostic, Calyxa, it's because I'm also a realist.

Robert Charles Wilson

agnostic realist ifs

Average people seldom talked about anything interesting and often hurt each other savagely.

Robert Charles Wilson

hurt average people