Scott Westerfeld Quotes

You must never call it the Shetlands. Islanders are proud and can be prickly about the name: it's either Shetland or the Shetland Islands.

Thank you, horseradish, for being neither a radish nor a horse. What you are is a liar food.

One survey found that ten percent of Americans thought Joan of Arc was Noah's wife.

All your names I and my friend approve of or nearly all as to sense & expression, but I am frightened by their length & sound when compounded. As you will see I have taken deoxide and skaiode because they agree best with my natural standard East and West. I like Anode & Cathode better as to sound, but all to whom I have shewn them have supposed at first that by Anode I meant No way.

The visual can seduce you, leading to false deductions, and ultimately, even the finest ideas can be reduced. Take for example, sexuality. If it is reduced down to the moment and to pleasure, things like that, that's not what sexuality is all about. Sexuality was to be in tandem with the sacred, not amputated from it.

People often get upset when you teach them what is in the Bible rather than what they presume is in the Bible.

People seem to have a great love for names. For to know a great many names seems to look like knowing a good many things.

The first step in wisdom is to know the things themselves; this notion consists in having a true idea of the objects; objects are distinguished and known by classifying them methodically and giving them appropriate names. Therefore, classification and name-giving will be the foundation of our science.

We believe in the wrong things. That's what frustrates me the most. Not the lack of belief, but the belief in the wrong things. You want meaning? Well, the meanings are out there. We're just so damn good at reading them wrong.

It was not so very long ago that people thought that semiconductors were part-time orchestra leaders and microchips were very small snack foods.

I'm in a weird position, because I like rainbows, but I'm not gay. So whenever I go out wearing a rainbow shirt, I have to put "Not gay." But I'm not against gays, so under that I'll have to put "... but supportive." It's weird how one group of people took refracted light. That's very greedy, gays.

The Secretary, working in the Dismal Swamp betimes next morning, was informed that a youth waited in the hall who gave the name of Sloppy. The footman who communicated this intelligence made a decent pause before uttering the name, to express that it was forced on his reluctance by the youth in question, and that if the youth had had the good sense and good taste to inherit some other name it would have spared the feelings of him the bearer.

The problem with my balloon collection is that people always think there's a party. Settle down. It's not a party. It's just balloons.

I think they named the orange before the carrot.

Appearances are not held to be a clue to the truth,' said his cousin. 'But we seem to have no other.

All I know is reception; I am and I have: but I do not get, and when I fancied I had gotten anything, I found I did not.

It is often said that Americans have no sense of history. Ask a college student who Jimmy Carter was and they will likely reply that he was a general in the Civil War, which occurred in 1492, when Americans dumped tea into the Gulf of Tonkin, sparking the First World War, which ended with the invasion of Grenada and the development of the cotton press.

All names mean something.

My name is growing all the time, and I’ve lived a very long, long time; so my name is like a story. Real names tell you the story of the things they belong to in my language, in the Old Entish as you might say. It is a lovely language, but it takes a very long time to say anything in it, because we do not say anything in it, unless it is worth taking a long time to say, and to listen to.

What is there in a name? It is merely an empty basket, until you put something into it.

While many questions about quantum mechanics are still not fully resolved, there is no point in introducing needless mystification where in fact no problem exists. Yet a great deal of recent writing about quantum mechanics has done just that.

How wrong to think I was anyone else, like thinking grass stains make you a beautiful view, like getting kissed makes you kissable, like feeling warm makes you coffee, like liking movies makes you a director. How utterly incorrect to think it any other way, a box of crap is treasures, a boy smiling means it, a gentle moment is a life improved.

To me there is a name for each person. I think it’s marvelous to have a name. A woman is not a woman. It’s either Gena or my mother or some other person.

I called it ignose, not knowing which carbohydrate it was. This name was turned down by my editor. 'God-nose' was not more successful, so in the end 'hexuronic acid' was agreed upon. To-day the substance is called 'ascorbic acid' and I will use this name.

At present our only true names are nicknames.