Do you have favorite quotes from Cordwainer Smith / Paul Linebarger? If so, do post them and where they are from, in the comments.
When I was designing some t-shirts for the site, I re-read The Dead Lady of Clown Town online, and the link takes you to where you can do that at no cost… it’s part of the Baen ebook website. I found a lot of quotes that I liked, though only a few (the ones in bold) ended up on shirts so far.
Here are some:
- Bright brains serve madness as well as they serve sanity—namely, very well indeed.
- I’m a machine, but I used to be a person, long, long ago.
- We will help each other to change the destiny of worlds, perhaps even to bring mankind back to humanity.
- Elaine felt as if she were leaving all known worlds behind. In fact, she was doing precisely that, but it did not occur to her that her own suspicion might be true.
- You will see tremendous things, some of them frightening. But they won’t be real.
- This is no time for fear. It is much too interesting.
- if we do not wish to go back to living a mere seventy years we had better not anger the only planet which produces stroon.
- A bad idea can spread like a mutated germ. If it is at all interesting, it can leap from one mind to another halfway across the universe before it has a stop put to it.
- Go on! Go on. This is a war of love. Keep going.
- When you make history you cannot always take care of all the little things too.
- Peace be with you in the everlasting now.
Madness is always better than X, and X to each patient is individual, personal, secret and overwhelmingly important.
… Wedder reformed the culture so vioently that whatever had been slovenly now became atrocious.
Sorry – I forgot to say that my second quotation is not from “The Dead Lady …”, but from “On the Gem Planet” – and of course the sixth word should read “violently”.
But I’m sure Cordwainerites will have spotted that already….
The most evocative phrase for me is “The Suffocating Benevolence of The Instrumentality”, which I believe was a strapline from one of the early books. This would make an amazing T shirt :)
I have to admit to borrowing character names for online gaming, which has had the benefit not only of starting conversations with other fans but also of allowing me to spread the word. Although the conversation tends to go “Lost Cmell? Where did you get that?” “It’s the name of a girlygirl in a Cordwainer Smith book.” “But you’re a guy.” “Yes, so?” “…Okay…”