Quotes from Algis Budrys

I have to have time to think. Why does time run on while a man thinks?

When you play the past over and over in your head, you can begin to see things in it that you missed when you were living it. You come to realize that there were moments when one word said differently, or one thing done at just the right time, would have changed everything.

No matter how many times you stir up a steaming pile of crap, it's still just a steaming pile of crap.

A story that needs to have words said about it, is a story that does not contain all its own right words. -- Introduction to Varley's "Persistence Of Vision" collection

It's no longer Colonel Norwood's time. The dead must not rise – they undermine everything their dying created. Resurrecting Norwood is an attempt to cancel history. I can't allow that, any more than any other human being would. And so all of this is a challenge to me. I was concerned that it might be a deliberate trap.

Death is in the nature of the universe, Barker. Death is only the operation of a mechanism. All the universe has been running down from the moment of its creation. Did you expect a machine to care what it acted upon? Death is like sunlight or a falling star; they don't care where they fall.

Constantly working outward, putting system after system inside the known universe, they were the bright hungry wave of mankind reaching out to gather in the stars.