You can only kill disappointment with a new try. Kim Stanley Robinson More Quotes by Kim Stanley Robinson More Quotes From Kim Stanley Robinson Look at the pattern this seashell makes. The dappled whorl, curving inward to infinity. That's the shape of the universe itself. There's constant pressure, pushing towards pattern. A tendency in matter to evolve into ever more complex forms. It's a kind of pattern gravity, a holy greening power we call 'Viriditas' and it is the driving force in the cosmos. Life, you see. Kim Stanley Robinson inward cosmos looks How was it that destruction could be so beautiful? Was there something in the scale of it? Was there some shadow in people, lusting for it? Or was it just a coincidental combination of the elements, the final proof that beauty has no moral dimension? Kim Stanley Robinson beautiful beauty people On the river path in Boston beauty was most expressed as youth and intelligence. That made sense; sixty degree-giving institutions, some three hundred thousand students; that meant at least one hundred fifty thousand more nubile young women than demographics would ordinarily suggest. Maybe that was why young men stayed in Boston when their college years were over, maybe that explained why they were so intellectually hyperactive, so frustrated, so alcoholic, such terrible drivers. Kim Stanley Robinson boston college men In an expanding universe, order is not really order, but merely the difference between the actual entropy exhibited and the maximum entropy possible. Kim Stanley Robinson expanding-universe differences order All the repetitions in the pattern were superficial; the moment was always new. It had to be lived, and then the next moment embraced as it arrived. Kim Stanley Robinson patterns next moments I grew up in a utopia, I did. California when I was a child was a child's paradise, I was healthy, well fed, well clothed, well housed. I went to school and there were libraries with all the world in them and after school I played in orange groves and in Little League and in the band and down at the beach and every day was an adventure. . . . I grew up in utopia. Kim Stanley Robinson beach children school A sudden gust: How big the world seems in a wind. Kim Stanley Robinson bigs wind world We all have secret lives. The life of excretion; the world of inappropriate sexual fantasies; our real hopes, our terror of death; our experience of shame; the world of pain; and our dreams. No one else knows these lives. Consciousness is solitary. Each person lives in that bubble universe that rests under the skull, alone. Kim Stanley Robinson pain real dream If the amount of money going into the war economy were invested in landscape restoration, we would be in a far more positive position. It may get a little dire before we pull together, but I think when the prosperous nations, and in particular the US, realise they're wrecking their own kids' lives, there will be a mass change in value. It will be a difficult century, and ugly, but I don't think that in the end people are so stupid as to kill themselves off. Kim Stanley Robinson stupid war kids The word of God came down to man as rain to soil, and the result was mud, not clear water. (Bistami) Pg. 128 Kim Stanley Robinson rain water men Atoms have a nucleus, made of protons and neutrons bound together. Around this nucleus shells of electrons spin, and each shell is either full or trying to get full, to balance with the number of protons-to balance the number of positive and negative charges. An atom is like a human heart, you see. Kim Stanley Robinson heart numbers science It is always the teacher who must learn the most... or else nothing real has happened in the exchange. Kim Stanley Robinson happened real teacher The vaunted experience of age was perhaps only a matter of wounds and scarring -- that young minds to old minds might be as young bodies to old bodies: stronger, more vital, less twisted by damage. Kim Stanley Robinson stronger age mind It is easy to live multiple lives! What is hard is to be a whole person Kim Stanley Robinson multiple persons easy And in this curious state I had the realization, at the moment of seeing that stranger there, that I was a person like everybody else. That I was known by my actions and words, that my internal universe was unavailable for inspection by others. They didn't know. They didn't know, because I never told them. Kim Stanley Robinson stranger realization action Anyway that's a large part of what economics is - people arbitrarily, or as a matter of taste, assigning numerical values to non-numerical things. And then pretending that they haven't just made the numbers up, which they have. Economics is like astrology in that sense, except that economics serves to justify the current power structure, and so it has a lot of fervent believers among the powerful Kim Stanley Robinson astrology powerful numbers It was that sort of sleep in which you wake every hour and think to yourself that you have not been sleeping at all; you can remember dreams that are like reflections, daytime thinking slightly warped. Kim Stanley Robinson reflection dream sleep The sky itself is the eighth color of the rainbow, spread over the whole sky for us, all the time. Kim Stanley Robinson rainbow color sky Fights over ideas are the most vicious of all. If it were merely food, or water, or shelter, we would work something out. But in the realm of ideas one can become idealistic . Kim Stanley Robinson fighting water ideas Beauty is power and elegance, right action, form fitting function, intelligence, and reasonability. And very often expressed in curves. Kim Stanley Robinson curves elegance action
