“You cant afford anthropomorphic biases when some of the aliens most like us would rather make human hamburgers than peace.”

“Damn real live people, getting in the way of peaceful ideals.”

“For as much as I hate the cemetery, Ive been grateful its here, too. I miss my wife. Its easier to miss her at a cemetery, where shes never been anything but dead, than to miss her in all the place...”

“Trust your weapon, it is almost certainly smarter than you are. Remember this and you may yet live.”

“What is it like when you lose someone you love?" Jane asked."You die, too. And you wait around for your body to catch up.”

“You do what you have to do to give people closure; it makes them feel better and it doesnt cost you much to do it. Id rather apologize for something I didnt really care about, and leave someone on ...”

“We are human only in contact, and conviviality, with what is not human.”

“The problem is this: nature has assembled all these species on this planet. The human species is no more important than any other species on this planet. For some reason, man accorded himself a sup...”

“More than the disappearing trees and roses, its the human tendency to suppress the Natural Voice of the Natures Man which is sorrowful.”

“Okay. We've got about twenty minutes before I get mean again.' She laughed, relieved the night was still young, 'What are you, some kind of sex-werewolf?”

“True love”

“Love”

“I shiver, thinking how easy it is to be totally wrong about people-to see one tiny part of them and confuse it for the whole, to see the cause and think it's the effect or vice versa”

“At sunrise everything is luminous but not clear.”

“I think it's impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves.”