Joanna Russ

"The trouble with men is that they have limited minds. Thats the trouble with women, too."

"He wished his imagination would not take so impressionistic a turn. It never fails."

"Houses stretched off on all sides, sometimes dipping below the ground and sometimes emerging out of it, piling themselves into pyramids, into almost toppling waves, never one rooftree more than eighty yards from the next. The planet was covered. There were the old, open-air cities planted with whatever would grow, mountains honeycombed, resorts in Antarctica, covered roads crammed with carrier traffic only, hovercraft, sea-craft, masses, structures, and installations under the sea, nets of algae towed in the air, some insects and no animals whatever, but people, people, people everywhere. What’s the opposite of the Garden of Eden?"

"“And you think they’ll let you,” said Machine. It was a flat, sad statement. “No,” she said, “but nobody ever let me do anything in my life before and I never let that stop me.”"

"“Rational people,” said the man, “realize that their lives must be made meaningful. Meaning isn’t just given us.”"

"Sit a man on his ass with nothing to do but eat and the first thing that goes is his mind. It never fails."

"“Well, hell,” said Jael more genuinely, “the war. If there isn’t one, there just was one, and if there wasn’t one, there soon will be one. Eh? The war between Us and Them."

"Dismissing the whole thing as the world’s aberration and not mine, I went back to bed."

"As my mother once said: The boys throw stones at the frogs in jest. But the frogs die in earnest."

"Remember, I don’t threaten. I don’t play. I always carry firearms. The truly violent are never without them."

"Fucking, if you will forgive the pun, is an anti-climax."

"Anyway everyboy (sorry) knows that what women have done that is really important is not to constitute a great, cheap labor force that you can zip in when youre at war and zip out again afterwards but to Be Mothers, to form the coming generation, to give birth to them, to nurse them, to mop floors for them, to love them, cook for them, clean for them, change their diapers, pick up after them, and mainly sacrifice themselves for them. This is the most important job in the world. That’s why they don’t pay you for it."