Thing about bad judgment? You got to have good judgment to notice you’ve got it.
- from Abaddon’s Gate by James S. A. Corey

I must be old, Pyotr thought to himself, if my son is being kind to me.
- from The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden

He knew that insofar as one denies what is, one is possessed by what is not, the compulsions, the fantasies, the terrors that flock to fill the void.
- from The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin

The end justifies the means. But what if there never is an end? All we have is means.

- from The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin

There are roads inside the mind and outside it the mere elaborateness of which shows plainly that, to have got into this, a wrong turning must have been taken way back.
- from The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin

Orr had a tendency to assume that people knew what they were doing, perhaps because he generally assumed that he did not.
- from The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin

Because life is robust,
Because life is bigger than equations, stronger than money, stronger than guns and poison and bad zoning policy, stronger than capitalism,
Because Mother Nature bats last, and Mother Ocean is strong, and we live inside our mothers forever, and Life is tenacious and you can never kill it, you can never buy it,
So Life is going to dive down into your dark pools, Life is going to explode the enclosures and bring back the commons,
O you dark pools of money and law and quantitudinal stupidity, you oversimple algorithms of greed, you desperate simpletons hoping for a story you can understand,
Hoping for safety, hoping for cessation of uncertainty, hoping for ownership of volatility, O you poor fearful jerks,
Life! Life! Life! Life is going to kick your ass.
- from New York 2140 by Kim Stanley Robinson

People didn't like to feel grateful, because they didn't like the need to feel grateful. So it was not a good feeling no matter which end of it you were on.

- from New York 2140 by Kim Stanley Robinson

Sometimes courage is carried by a roar--sometimes it is hidden within a wavering voice.

- from Alone by Scott Sigler

Maybe it would be better if we didn't love. If we didn't lose, either. If we didn't get our hearts stomped on, shattered; if we didn't have to patch and repatch until we're like Frankenstein monsters, all sewn together and bound up by who knows what.
- from "Alex" in Delirium Stories by Lauren Oliver

We look at our race, this parade of men and women, and the unbelievable harm and cruelty they do. And we sigh, and we say, "Perhaps our time is past, let the sharks or the cockroaches take over." And then, without knowing why, without even thinking of it, the worst among us does the great thing, the noble deed, that spark of impossible human godliness. And we say, "Perhaps the human race is entitled to a little more sufferance. Let them keep trying to reach the dream." Evil can come from good, and good from evil.
- Captain James T. Kirk in Harlan Ellison's "The City on the Edge of Forever"

I had got into a net through my own timidity and weakness, and I did not see how to get out of it.
- from "The Grey Woman" in Gothic Tales by Elizabeth Gaskell

Many people object to "wasting money in space" yet have no idea how much is actually spent on space exploration. The CSA's budget, for instance, is less than the amount Canadian spend on Halloween candy every year, and most of it goes toward things like developing telecommunications satellites and radar systems to provide data for weather and air quality forecasts, environmental monitoring and climate change studies. Similarly, NASA's budget is not spent in space but right here on Earth, where it's invested in American businesses and universities, and where it also pays dividends, creating new jobs, new technologies, and even new industries.

- from An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth by Col. Chris Hadfield

I had certain major character flaws that she needed to point out with an accompanying burst of emotion, and my presence was necessary.

- from Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay

Anybody can be charming if they don't mind faking it, saying all the stupid, obvious, nauseating things that a conscience keeps most people from saying.

- from Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay

"Never go into the deep parts of the forest, for there are many dangers there, both dark and bright, and they will ensnare your soul."
- from Serafina and the Black Cloak by Robert Beatty

That's what time does: We stand stubbornly like rocks while it flows all around us, believing that we are immutable--and all the time we're being carved, and shaped, and whittled away.

- from Delirium Stories: Hana, Annabel, & Raven by Lauren Oliver

This is what amazes me: that people are new every day. That they are never the same. You must always invent them, and they must invent themselves, too.

- from Requiem by Lauren Oliver

"...but you can't save people from the world. There's nowhere else to take them."

- from The Girl with All the Gifts by M.R. Carey

"And whenever you want to do something and you're not an adult, people tell you to stop. Even when there's no real reason."

That was true.

- from Summerlost by Ally Condie