Kim Stanley Robinson Quotes

Deep down, there is in the substance of the cosmos a primordial disposition, sui generis, for self-arrangement and self-involution.

Far from feeling dwarfed by the vast reaches and energy of the cosmos, what we really learn is that we are the most remarkable and complicated product of cosmic evolution, and our potential is unlimited.

The universe is not only self-organizing, it is also self-correcting.

It’s hard to build models of inflation that don't lead to a multiverse. It’s not impossible, so I think there’s still certainly research that needs to be done. But most models of inflation do lead to a multiverse, and evidence for inflation will be pushing us in the direction of taking [the idea of a] multiverse seriously.

There's always a hole in theories somewhere if you look close enough.

We will first understand how simple the universe is when we recognize how strange it is.

Look at the world and see what's there. It's very beautiful. It's a very exciting but in some ways treacherous world, and all this goes into the writing.

We began to look at "Why is that?" And a large part of that has to do with the fact that when people have a lot of options to choose from they don't know how to tell them apart. They don't know how to keep track of them.

Vampire politics make the very complicated dance of manners that is werewolf protocol look like the Hokey Pokey.

We have to look at the figures of speech a writer uses, his images and symbols, to realize that underneath all the complexity of human life that uneasy stare at an alien nature is still haunting us, and the problem of surmounting it still with us.

Ye ken, we've been robbin' and running aroound on all kinds o' worlds for a lang time, and I'll tell ye this: The universe is a lot more comp-li-cated than it looks from the ooutside.

All of us who study the origin of life find that the more we look into it, the more we feel it is too complex to have evolved anywhere. We all believe as an article of faith that life evolved from dead matter on this planet. It is just that life's complexity is so great, it is hard for us to imagine that it did.

. . . but the Universe is an awfully big place. There is room enough for an awful lot of people to be right about things and still not agree.

She had one of those charming faces which, according to the angle from which you see them, look either melancholy or impertinent. Her eyes were grey; her trick of narrowing them made her seem to reflect, the greater part of the time, in the dusk of her second thoughts. With that mood, that touch of arriere pensee, went an uncertain, speaking set of lips.

Your life, your soul, your world. They cannot kill it. Look at me, I’ve died but I opened my eyes again.

Universe is synergetic. Life is synergetic.

Look at how goddamn ugly the stars are.

Look at that! If you ever needed convincing that we live in the solar system, that we are on a ball of rock, orbiting around the Sun with other balls of rock, then look at that! That's the solar system coming down and grabbing you by the throat.

The universe is still a place of mystery and wonder.

Watching a Kubrick film is like gazing up at a mountaintop. You look up and wonder, how could anyone have climbed that high?

We do not understand much of anything, from... the "big bang" , all the way down to the particles in the atoms of a bacterial cell. We have a wilderness of mystery to make our way through in the centuries ahead.

Look into a flower and you see the whole cosmos.

The most telling and profound way of describing the evolution of the universe would undoubtedly be to trace the evolution of love.

The universe danced towards life. Life was a remarkably common commodity. Anything sufficiently complicated seemed to get cut in for some, in the same way that anything massive enough got a generous helping of gravity. The universe had a definite tendency towards awareness. This suggested a certain subtle cruelty woven into the very fabric of space-time.

Our ignorance can be divided into problems and mysteries. When we face a problem, we may not know its solution, but we have insight, increasing knowledge, and an inkling of what we are looking for. When we face a mystery, however, we can only stare in wonder and bewilderment, not knowing what an explanation would even look like.